Vampire quick, I pounced. The bird fluttered in my hands for only a moment before I bit into its flesh.

Yes, that’s it, blood! I drank the few sips of blood the robin had to offer, eyes shut in delight. When it was shriveled and dead in my hands, I let it drop as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Only then did I realize I had just done that right in front of Lucas. Shame hit me as I thought how savage I must have looked, and how disgusted Lucas must be.

But when I hesitantly raised my eyes to him, Lucas had turned away—just like I’d asked him to. He hadn’t seen. Sensing that I was done, he turned back around and smiled at me gently. When he saw the fear I felt, he shook his head.

“I love you,” he murmured. “That means I’m not just here for the pretty parts. I’m here no matter what.”

Alight with relief, I took his hand and walked with him to the diner. We were broke, and I wore clothes that didn’t fit me, and we were on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere—but in that moment I felt more beautiful than any princess or supermodel or anything. I had Lucas, who loved me no matter what. That was all I needed.

We ate fast at the diner. Lucas was starving, and I needed regular food, too. Between mouthfuls of French fries, we tried to work out what else we might do with our precious few moments of free time.

“Can we find an Internet café, maybe? I could e-mail my parents.”

“No. N. O. First of all, there’s no way we’d find an Internet café out in the sticks. Second, you’re not e-mailing them. You can call once you know where they are, but not from a cell, or anything else that can be traced back to us. You can send a letter. But no e-mail. That’s another Black Cross order we’re not disobeying.”

Lucas claimed there was a difference between disobeying orders and breaking stupid rules, but right that second, I couldn’t see it. Whatever. I knew another way to find out what had gone down the night Evernight burned.

At first I wanted to use Lucas’s cell phone, but he pointed out that Black Cross would then be able to track the call. Luckily, once we were done eating, we found a bank of pay phones at the side of the diner. The first two I picked up had no dial tone, and the third’s cord had been cut, but the fourth worked okay. I smiled in relief as soon as I heard the dial tone. O for operator. “Collect,” I said, reading off the number I wanted from Lucas’s cell phone contacts list. “Say that it’s Bianca Olivier.”

Silence followed. “Did she hang up?” I said.

“There’s a pause with collect calls.” Lucas stood next to me, leaning against the plastic hood of the pay phone. “They don’t want you to yell your message at the other person before they’ve accepted the charges.”

The phone line clicked, and I heard a sleepy voice say, “Bianca?”

“Vic!” I bounced up and down on my heels, and Lucas and I shared a huge smile. “Vic, you’re okay!”

“Yeah, yeah. Whoa, wait a second—I’m still kinda waking up here.” I could imagine Vic clutching his cell phone to his face, with bad bed-head, in the middle of an extremely messy bedroom, surrounded by his posters. Probably he had crazy sheets, plaid or polka-dotted. He yawned, then, more alertly, asked, “Am I dreaming again?”

“No dream. It’s me. You weren’t injured in the fire?”

“No. Nobody got hurt very badly, which was, like, crazy good luck. Lost my pith helmet, though.” Vic obviously considered this a grave tragedy. “What about you? Are you okay? After they put out the fire, we were going nuts trying to find you. A couple people said they saw you on the grounds, so we knew you got out of the school, but we couldn’t figure where you ran off to.”

“I’m fine. I’m with Lucas.”

“Lucas?” No wonder Vic sounded astonished. As far as he knew, Lucas and I had broken up months ago. We’d had to keep our relationship a secret since then. “This is getting totally surreal. If this is just a dream, I’m gonna be so mad.”

“You’re not dreaming,” Lucas called. His hearing was sharp enough to listen in on the call, even though he was standing a foot from the receiver. “Pull it together, man. What are you doing asleep at eleven A.M.?”

“As you should recall, I am the proverbial night owl. Sleeping until noon is not only my right but my responsibility,” Vic said. “Besides, as the old song goes, school’s out for summer, school’s out forever.”

I gasped. “Forever? Does that mean Evernight Academy was destroyed?”

“Destroyed, no. Mrs. Bethany swears they’ll open for business in the fall, though I don’t see how. I mean, that place was torched.”

The harder questions came next. I gripped the receiver tightly, willing my voice not to shake. “Were my parents hurt? Did you see them?”

“They’re okay. I told you—everybody got out all right. Your mom and dad didn’t get caught in the fire. In fact, they were helping us look for you.” Vic paused. “They were pretty freaked out, Bianca.”

That was as close as Vic got to a guilt trip. I couldn’t really feel the impact, though; I was too elated to know that my parents had survived the Black Cross attack.

“Do you know where they are?” I didn’t think they would go far from Evernight Academy. My parents would stay close to the grounds—mostly because they would be hoping I’d return. I knew I couldn’t, but I hated the thought of them waiting for me there.