“I’m not sure,” I say, looking around. The campus village is quiet, cobbled road blanketed with fallen leaves. “Though I’d like you to do some digging for me. Have you heard of the Red Ribbon Society? They’re Convert supremacists. Maybe they’re involved.”
“Red Ribbon,” Penny says slowly, drawing out each syllable. “It doesn’t ring any bells.”
“I can get some intel on them, too, if you’re interested.”
“No,” she says. “Stay out of their way and focus on your mission. We can’t have anyone finding out what you are.”
“All right,” I say, even though I know my curiosity won’t let me keep far from the Red Ribbons’ gallery for long.
“Have you met your roommate yet?”
I take a careful breath. “Yes,” I say. “She’s an Astra,” I say her surname, breathing it out, and hear Penny’s silence on the other end. She isn’t one to hesitate, so the fact that she doesn’t say anything strikes me as odd. “You there?” I ask.
“An Astra?” She whispers the name, as though it’s poisonous. “At Tynahine?”
“Aye,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. Penny says something, voice low, but I can’t make it out. “Do you still want me to stay in that room?”
“I should have known this would happen,” she says, and I swear I hear panic in her voice. “But yes. You have to stay there. Who is it, exactly? Is she from the main branch?”
“It’s Aliz Astra,” I say, lowering my voice, afraid she’s lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping. “The heir.”
Another long silence. I try to picture Penny. She’s probably pacing from one bookcase to another. The moon is most likely shining through the stained-glass window of her office in the abandoned convent.
“Has she done anything to you?” she finally asks.
“As if,” I say.
“You must be careful,” Penny says. “You have no idea how dangerous that family is, Rebecca. Especially the heir. Their powers go far beyond that of a regular vampire.”
I’m used to hearing Penny being in control. She sounds nothing like herself.
“Don’t underestimate me,” I say.
Aliz Astra may not be a regular vampire.
But I’m not a regular human, either.
Penny told meto not make myself known to the Red Ribbons. But if there’s a chance they were involved with what happened in Inverness, I must dosomething.So, I get up earlier than I should, just after I hear Astra lowering the lid of her coffin. The narrow hallways ofTynarrich Hall are dark, lanterns low, chandeliers lacking their usual glow. I know that if I go outside, all I’ll find is an overcast sky. Wind and rain.
And even though I’d like some fresh air, I go down to the tunnels. This time I’m not looking for the secret library. I head straight to the gallery, hoping once again that the Red Ribbons may have left something behind. I take a meandering staircase, and just as I reach the hallway where the little gallery is hidden, I hear them.
Voices.
I stay back, waiting. They can’t belong to vampires. Not this early. I peer out from the staircase; the hallway is empty, and the low drone of voices comes from behind the wooden door. I keep my cheek pressed to the stone wall, slightly damp. I can’t make out a word they’re saying. The staircase beneath me is still and silent. Slowly, I step out into the hallway, keeping each step as light as I can.
The door to the gallery is shut. But I can finally make out what the voices inside are saying.
“This would mean breaking the treaties,” a husky baritone says. I glance through a thin slit in the side of the door.
The gallery inside is busy. Ten—maybe twelve—vampires, all in white shirts with red ribbons around their necks, leaning or sitting around the large table, drinking blood from ornamental glass goblets. The liquid is half a shade lighter than the synthetic stuff the university provides them with. I could recognise human blood anywhere. They all have those strange and frozen features of a Convert vampire. The table has a dozen candles, wax dripping onto metal dishes, while they all pass around books and leaflets.
“The treaties get broken all the time,” a girl with short black hair, seated at the top of the table, says. She’s the one I saw in Gustavsson’s class. “I met an Avignon who kept a collection of vampire hunters in his dungeon just to drink fresh blood.”
“Hunters don’t count,” another voice says as I suppress a shiver.Avignon.One of the Council’s board members. The vampire speaking now seems to be a boy, no older than fifteen, though by the cutof his clothes, I can imagine he’s been around for at least a century. “I say we send them a message. Drain a few humans, enough to spook them.” I swallow hard.
“No,” another voice interjects. “We should compel one of them to kill a vampire. Preferably someone with ties to the Council. They’ll put Faust Nocth in jail and keep our campus free of roaches.”
“Who, then?” the teenage boy asks.
