Valentine unceremoniously dumps me in the back seat of the black car then climbs in so he’s beside me. I kick and scream as Roman flanks my other side. Then that Lillian woman slips into the seat across from me with her back to the driver, close enough that our knees touch. I’m surrounded. All of them calmly block my panicked punching and kicking as I fight to leave the car, but it’s so useless that after a minute I stop, my cheeks hot from the exertion.
I flinch as the car’s locks engage.
And suddenly, all the thoughts on the beach aren’t just dimmed, they’re completely gone. For the first time in my entire life, my brain is utterly and completely silent—well except for the bit that’s screaming in panic because I’m stuck in a car with magical strangers who just covered up a vicious vampire attack.
The woman studies me with cool interest for a moment before she reaches for a thermos tucked into the seat corner and begins unscrewing the top. “I always keep a bit of tea with me on cold nights,” she says, her voice matter of fact. She pours some of it into the thermos’s lid cup and holds it out to me. “Drink some. The warmth will help.”
I hesitate a second, then reluctantly take it while I scan the interior for a way out. A weapon. Something. The car is surprisingly large and luxurious in an old-fashioned sort of way with buttery leather seats and mahogany inlays on the door frames. But there’s nothing I can use, and the locks aren’t visible anywhere on the door. My stomach sinks. I’m their captive now. Outnumbered. What could I even do? Run? Given their abilities, I won’t make it far. And if I somehow managed to find help, Roman would just mind-manipulate them the way he did the people on the beach.
He's staring at me now, eyes narrowed like I’m a cockroach, something to squash under his shoe. All traces of the charm he exuded on the beach have disappeared. Valentine, on the other hand gazes tensely out the window, his whole body twitchy and alert. He seems too preoccupied with tracking the police cars to worry about me as we pull out onto the cliff road and turn right, away from town, toward the top of the mountain.
Where are they taking me? I grip the cup of tea, which is comfortingly warm, but I don’t drink it. For all I know it has poison in it.
With a sigh, the woman produces a cup from a black satchel near her feet and pours a second cup of tea then brings it to her lips and takes a pointed sip as if she’s guessed what I’m thinking. “Chamomile.” She smiles around her cup. “It relaxes the nerves.”
I get the feeling she’ll be insulted if I don’t drink now, so I take a small sip. It’s good. Warm, slightly floral and sweet. And I hate that she’s right, but it is calming. I can feel my shoulder muscles ease just a little.
“I know this must be terribly frightening for you,” the woman says, her entire countenance softening. “Given what happened down there and what you just saw us do. But I promise we are not interested in hurting you. Just as we weren’t interested in hurting your friends. We simply needed to contain a bad situation.”
“I understand,” I say, feigning the same calm she’s radiating. If I have any hope of them letting me go, I need to convince her that I’m not a threat. “If you’d meant harm, everyone including me would be dead, right?”
This surprises a laugh out of Roman and I can’t help noticing those canines of his again, sharp as razors, his eyes subtly glinting red in the dim light. Yep, definitely a vampire. I thought as much on the beach, but this close, it’s obvious even if he’s not acting feral like the other two. He has the same aura of hunger about him. I inch a little closer to Valentine.
The woman’s smile widens a bit, an attempt at being reassuring, but combined with the black-smoked eyeshadow she’s rocking it isn’t. She holds out her free hand.
“Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Lillian Iverson. Ms. Iverson to our students, headmistress of Renfield Academy. And as you may have already guessed, a witch.” She gestures to Roman. “And yes, the man next to you is a vampire. Roman Black, one of our best instructors.”
She’s the head of some school somewhere? It must be far away since I’ve never heard of it. Maybe that’s where they’re taking me now. My insides squirm. Except we aren’t headed out of town. We’re headed up the mountain toward the forest. There’s nothing that way but trees and rocks and wild animals…and potential burial sites for a body. I swallow hard, my nerves thrumming again despite the tea.
Roman gives me a terse nod, but keeps his hands tightly clasped in his lap.
“And Cage Valentine is another of our instructors. And a familiar. Just like you.”
Valentine takes one last long look at the road as the cop cars turn into the beach parking lot. Then he wipes his palm on his pants before offering me his hand to shake. “I am truly sorry for the circumstances of our meeting, but not that we met,” he says. His palm is still damp with sweat when my hand touches his. Despite the cold he appears to be perspiring all over, his upper lip beaded with moisture. Is it from the effort of hauling me up the stairs into the car? This thought gives me a teeny tiny bit of satisfaction. I fought as hard as I could. I wish it had been enough to get away.
“What kind of school has vampires and witches on the faculty?” I ask, trying to muster more courage than I feel.
Headmistress Iverson sets down her now empty cup beside her feet. “The kind that teaches vampires how to safely exist in this world and familiars how to help them.” She states it so simply, as if it’s obvious and commonplace. And it makes me feel like I’ve had a psychotic break or something, like maybe I’m still on the beach with Nicholas, my head finally so overwhelmed by thoughts that it just snapped and I’ve been hallucinating the events of the past hour. That actually feels more plausible than what she’s telling me.
“So what’s a familiar anyway?” I ask, frustration building inside me. I want out of this car. I want this all to be a bad dream. But every moment that passes, drives home that all of this is very, very real.
“Familiars are servants to vampires,” Roman says. “Created by witches to do our bidding and protect us when we are at our most vulnerable.”
Valentine stiffens beside me. I glance at his face. His lips are pressed so tightly together the skin around them is puckered. “Protectors. Not servants.”
Roman’s mouth twitches into an amused smile. “Okay, protectors.”
Valentine glares at him, but Valentine either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
I turn back to Iverson. “Okay, and why exactly do you think I’m one. A familiar?”
Valentine answers before she can. “Roman’s compulsion didn’t work on you. That was the first clue. It meant you were either another vampire or a familiar.”
“And then of course, you smell,” Roman adds. “At least your blood does.”
What? I surreptitiously sniff at my arm pits which makes Iverson laugh. “No, no. What he means is your blood is repulsive to him—to all vampires. This is by design, so familiars can effectively serve their vampire masters without ever becoming—”
“Their next meal,” I finish for her. I think back to the vampire on the beach, how he abruptly stopped drinking my blood and morphed into a more human version of himself as if the taste of me broke his frenzy.
“And you read minds, do you not?” Headmistress Iverson asks.
I’m so taken aback that she knows I don’t have time to temper my expression.
“All familiars do. Knowing what the humans are thinking is an incredible advantage when it comes to protecting our kind,” Iverson explains.
“I thought you said familiars protect vampires,” I say, “Aren’t you a witch?”
The corner of Iverson’s mouth tilts upward. “Very astute. I did say that, yes. And it is true, though your abilities can be a gift to all supernaturals.”
“Gift?” I grouse. “No, it’s a curse.”
Roman laughs again.
Valentine and Iverson shoot him a look, but he pointedly ignores them both, watching the world whizz past the window instead. We are halfway to the top of the mountain now. A sentry of tall trees border Roman’s side of the car, whooshing past at an alarming rate. On Valentine’s side there is an absence of trees and a steep drop off to the ocean, so it looks as if we’re cruising through the sky. We are going too fast for this road. I grip the edges of the seat tightly. I want to go home. Just thinking about my bedroom brings tears to my eyes. This is too much. It’s all too much.
Iverson folds her arms across her chest. “It’s enough of a gift that our school was named in honor of a familiar and not a vampire. Raeford Morton Renfield.” She looks at Roman when she says it and he lets out a heavy sigh, his eyes flitting heavenward. “He was the inspiration for the character by the same name in Bram Stoker’s novel. But he was also real. As was Dracula. Though the novel takes certain liberties with the truth of who these men were, as is often the case with fiction.”
Of course, I know the novel she’s talking about, but my mother always forbid me from reading it or any other novels with vampires, ghosts, witches or demons in them. I always thought it was a religious thing, but now I can’t help wondering if she knows what I am and that’s why she kept me away. The thought is unsettling…and impossible. I can read her mind. If she knew I was a familiar, I would’ve figured it out long before now.
“What liberties?” I ask.
Valentine turns to face me. “In the novel, Renfield is depicted as insane, but it’s more likely he was misunderstood by the humans because of his mind-reading. The longer he was separated from Dracula, the more psychically overwhelmed he would’ve been since the mindreading is difficult even for the most experienced familiar to control when out of proximity to their masters. Everything we know about the real man points to him being very smart and capable.” There is a note of pride in his voice.
“And very dead. At Dracula’s hand,” Roman interjects. “He couldn’t have been that capable.”
I frown. “I thought vampires couldn’t harm familiars.”
Roman arches one eyebrow in such a way that a sliver of icy fear runs down my back. “We don’t like the taste of your blood. But that doesn’t mean we can’t kill you.”
“Cut it out, Roman,” Valentine mutters, glaring at him. “What’s your problem tonight?”
Roman glares back, but doesn’t reply though it’s clear he’s trying hard not to for some reason.
The resulting silence is hellishly awkward.
We crest the top of the cliff and plunge onto another road, one that’s not much more than a dirt path leading straight into the forest. The car judders and bounces over the uneven terrain. It’s so dark the headlights only illuminate approximately ten feet of road ahead. Panic squeezes my heart.
“Where are we going?” I ask, too scared now to pretend otherwise.
Before anyone has time to answer, the dirt road we’re on seems to dead end into a wall of trees, but we’re not slowing down. If anything, we’re speeding up.
“Hey!” The cup of tea tumbles from my hands. We’re going to crash.
Everyone is looking straight ahead, same as me, but they aren’t reacting at all. I shrink into my seat, gripping the leather with both hands. I let out a yelp. The car barrels off the road straight at the enormous pines…and passes right through them as if they are made of nothing but air.
Ms. Iverson picks up the teacup and tsks at the liquid puddling in the footwell. She pats my knee in a perfunctory sort of manner. “It’s camouflage, dear. Merely a means of protection.”
I lean forward and peer out the front window. Up ahead a stone wall runs in either direction as far as I can see and there’s an impressive looking iron gate directly in front of us. When we’re within fifty feet of it, it groans open, the sound like nothing I’ve ever heard before—an unearthly moaning. Marley from A Christmas Carol dragging along his boxes of sins. Beyond the gate, a stone castle-like building covered in moss with turrets and gargoyles looms in the middle of a wide expanse of perfectly manicured grass.
“Welcome to Renfield Academy,” Ms. Iverson says.