“No,” I say quickly. “Of course not. I mean, if you love each other, that’s all that matters, right?” I want to be sick. But this is the sort of nonsense Cassie Smith believes.
He grins, slapping my back. We leave the auditorium, and I glance at the other humans. The wide hall, with an arched ceiling, is incredibly noisy. This place might have looked like an ordinary university if it weren’t for the shuttered windows blocking out the sun. “Ife, my girlfriend, is in the library,” Stephan says. “Do you want to meet her?”
Over an hour has passed since I took my supplements. And even though I’d rather do anything butmeeta leech, the scent of my blood must have dulled by now. “Sure,” I say. “Which library?”
“Kinsnet,” he says. We step out into the park surrounding the building, the grey sky threatening rain. I suppose the Night Dean uses the underground tunnels to move about.
“Isn’t she up a bit early for a vampire?” I ask. The damp air slips under the collar of my coat.
“We compromise,” he says. “Plus, vampires don’t sleep as long as we do. Four hours is enough for them.”
The other buildings must be crawling with leeches by now. We make our way through the cobbled roads of the campus village, past cafés and pubs, which only recently started selling something other than blood.
Stephan is twenty-one, a year younger than me, and studying physics. Until last year, he was at la Sorbonne, but as soon as Ife told him Tynahine was accepting human students, he jumped at the chance. “I still can’t believe I got accepted,” he says, stopping in front of a bike rental to check out the prices. “I’ve got the black envelope framed above my bed. I even considered getting it tattooed.”
“Wow,” I say, though I didn’t mean to say it out loud. He doesn’t take offense, laughing instead. He seems decent, which is a pity.
“Why areyouhere?” he asks. He stops again, this time to grab a takeaway coffee. To make the university’s so-called Integration easier, half a dozen human establishments have opened in the campus village. He orders himself an espresso, and after I nod, he gets me one, too.
“My folks have worked with vampires for centuries,” I say. “I’ve always been interested in their world. And it’ll be interesting to hear what vampires have to say about history.”
He downs his coffee in a single gulp and then proceeds to study the paper cup it came in, dark brown with the university emblem printed on it. A rose and a book, encased inside a blood drop, with three Gaelic words between them.Lorgis Meòmhraich.“There are entire fields of knowledge only vampires have access to,” he says. “Scientists who have lived for centuries, who uncovered truths long before humans did, but their works have been kept in the dark. And artists, too,” he continues, still analysing the cup. “There are masterpieces hanging on the walls of this university which would otherwise be in the busiest halls of the Louvre.”
I try my hardest to feign interest, but I care little about Vampiredom’s so-called masterpieces. I follow Stephan through the campus village until we come to the largest of the eight libraries. Kinsnet Library is a giant vaulted building, with a bell tower and statues by the thick wooden doors. He tells me, as we stare up at it, that it got its name from Harriet Kinsnettle, one of Tynahine’s founders. The damp wind blows rain against my back, and I breathe, forcing myself to remain calm.
Stephan must have noticed my unease, because he squeezes my shoulders. “Whatever kind of vampires you’re familiar with, Tynahine’s students are much better,” he says.
Stephan opens the library door, and I run my fingers over the leather strap of my watch. The moment I look up, my budding fear vanishes. Five floors of books fill the space, golden railings, spiralling staircases, and wooden ladders climbing up to the ceiling. Thevaulted wall is blue, with a golden constellation painted over it, cherubs holding the stars. The main hall has a hundred tables, all of them full of students with their noses deep in books, and for a second, I forget that they’re not human.
“Ah, there she is,” he whispers, gazing across the wide hall. Warmth colours his cheeks. I follow his gaze and spot her. Her dreadlocks are gathered up in a pink hair wrap, a few framing her round face. She’s wearing what looks like a hand-knitted jumper, pastel pink and green, over a denim skirt. When she comes to stop in front of us, her eyes don’t turn crimson, which is a first. The garlic is most definitely working.
I touch my watch strap and force a smile. Stephan swings an arm around her shoulders, kisses her temple, and then turns back to me. “Cassie, meet Ife. Ife, meet Cassie.”
“You certainly didn’t waste time making friends,” the vampire says, showing me her fangs as she smiles. Her voice is sweet, and she’s painfully gorgeous. But the pretty ones are often the most dangerous.
Ife glances at Stephan’s now-empty paper cup and stares at the university’s emblem. “Lorg is Meòmhraich,” she says. “Seek and reflect. Quite funny considering vampires don’t have reflections, don’t you think?”
“Tynahine’s founders must have had a sense of humor,” I say, glancing up at the ceiling. Those two words are engraved into an arch. The students surrounding us are all glancing in my direction, though they mainly seem curious, instead of thirsty. “I think I’ll do some exploring,” I say, my cheeks hurting as I keep a smile in place. “I’ll catch you both later?”
“Have dinner with us tomorrow,” Ife says, before I can run off. “I promise I won’t bite.”
I can do this.
“Sure,” I say. When I finally get away from them, I take the first staircase I find. They probably noticed my discomfort, or the quickening of my heart. I can’t shake off my disgust. Stephan could have had any life he had chosen. Anyone who can afford to go to Tynahine can.
Instead, he’s throwing it all away for a vampire.
I’m not surewhere to start. The history section, on the fourth floor, is incredibly busy. I search for books on Tynahine’s founders, hoping to find some kind of map of the tunnels beneath the campus, but I get distracted. Kinsnet has manuscripts that were supposedly burnt in the fire of Alexandria, their scrolls whole and intact. Even Sappho’s poetry is here, tomes full of it, a fountain of lost literature.
I spend far too long staring at the spines, pulling out volume after volume, until I almost forget where I am. I lean over the banister at the very top of the five floors. Ife is not the only leech in the library. My muscles tense, my body remembering my natural form. Night has fallen.
I’ve been in large crowds of vampires before. A hundred or more, with my wrists bound, playing the victim. I always got out alive. Tynahine has a student body of two hundred newly admitted humans, and three thousand vampires. And all three thousand, according to Stephan, arewell behaved.
“Don’t—” a voice moans. My hands tense on the golden railing.
I stare back at the labyrinth of bookcases, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice.
“—bite me!”
