All conversation stopped the second Elle walked into the room.

Everyone stared at Elle as she sank into a chair and started pulling out her notebooks. Some of the guys looked curious; some shocked; some angry.

None of these boys were used to being this close to a girl like Elle.

No one really looked at me. I slid into a chair next to Elle, grateful for the distraction. Elle wasn’t just pretty; she was perfect. Her makeup was always done, and her hair was always shiny, and she wore clothes other than the same t-shirts she’d been wearing since tenth grade.

I’d be lying if I said part of me didn’t want to be like her. But I didn’t know how she had the time to look so good. She probably wasn’t hiding a freshly-turned vampire in her dorm room.

I pulled the sleeves of my sweatshirt down over my hands, feeling the puncture wounds on my wrist pulse as though to remind me of my purpose. We have a job to do here.

“Hi boys,” Elle sang. “What’s on the docket for today?”

“Uh…” Corey, the fastidious sophomore who manned the club’s books, had taken over meetings while Toby was out. “We’re, um… as I was saying, we’re rescheduling crossbow practice so that some of our members can make the LARPing tournament this weekend.”

Corey glared at a few bashful-looking nerds, then went back to his list.

“We need everyone’s emails and phone numbers for the Student Org registration,” Corey continued, glancing at Elle. He awkwardly pushed the signup page towards her, skipping over several students. “Elle, if you wanna give me… give us… your number..”

I looked around the room to take stock as the page got passed around and found Miguel looking sullen in a corner.

He leaned over to me when we made eye contact.

“Good to have you back,” he murmured, with a curt nod. I nodded back, then quickly turned my eyes back to Corey.

Don’t act weird, I thought, but that was a losing battle.

“My boyfriend is, like, totally curious about this stuff,” Elle whispered on my other side. She uncapped her pen and started writing in her notebook, then tilted it over for me to read:

Nerds! So cute

I smiled awkwardly at her. I just wanted to get some information, and get out.

“Paige,” Corey said, and I jumped in my seat.

“Here,” I said, automatically.

“Yes, we see that,” he said, tucking his pen into his shirt pocket. “As I understand that Toby is unwell and unable to join us today, we were hoping that you could give us an update on your search party this last weekend.”

Elle eyed me with glee and scribbled something else--

Search party??? Hot

I studiously avoided her gaze.

“We didn’t find anything,” I said. “It was pretty dark, and we were just wandering around… There was a creek bed, and we thought we might find something there--”

The image of Nico in his bloodstained coattails rose unbidden in my mind. I shook the image out of my head, and remembered to cough a little bit.

“We were out all night, and it was pretty cold, so I think we both caught something. It just hit Toby worse than me.”

“Cold?” Miguel said. “It was supposed to be balmy that night.”

I shrugged.

“And damp. We weren’t dressed for it, I guess,” I said, but I didn’t look at him.

I tried not to look at anyone. I didn’t want to know what they were thinking.

Get the information and get out, I thought.

“What were you guys looking for?” Elle asked. Corey cleared his throat.

“We have reason to believe that the Averus clan, which has been in hiding, is making a resurgence in the area and attacking humans,” Corey said.

“Oh my god, right,” Elle said. “So you don’t think they were wiped out?”

The entire club turned to look at her again.

“That… is the reason why we’re here,” Corey said.

“Oh yeah totally,” Elle said. “And you were looking for them… in the woods?”

“Where the body was,” I mumbled.

“Spooky,” Elle said. Corey cleared his throat.

“This may be a good moment to initiate our new members,” he said.

“What were you going to do if you found one of them?” Elle asked, ignoring Corey.

“Toby brought a crossbow,” I said.

“Aren’t Averus vampires, like, really powerful?” Elle started doodling a flower on the corner of her page. “They had to be pretty powerful to stand up to literally the rest of the world, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, desperate to steer the conversation. “What… what made them so powerful?”

“The legend says there’s a poison in their fangs,” Miguel said. “The first Averus vampire, Draven… some say he made a deal with the devil. Some say it was just a natural mutation, if it existed at all.”

“Miguel is our Averus expert,” Corey said, trying to regain control of the room again.

“So all the vampires he turned…?” I started.

“All the vampires he turned, or the vampires turned by the vampires he turned,” Miguel said. “They’re all Averus. They all have the blood, and the scar, and the rest.”

He knew about the scar?

“The rest?” I said, then, quickly-- “I don’t remember much from high school history.”

Miguel shrugged.

“No one knows the full extent of it. It’s all mythology now--all that’s been confirmed is the scar, and a penchant for human blood. More than a normal vampire. Averus are evil.”

“But what does that mean?” I pressed. “Evil?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Evil,” he said. “Just… evil.”

“What was it like for people to be turned?” I asked, hoping I sounded fascinated by the history and not by my own circumstances.

“No one’s been turned for centuries,” Miguel said. “All vampires are just born now. The history books say vampires have to be buried in the earth, and that the transformation is painful. If they don’t feed soon, they lose their minds. Some vampires remember their transformations, but after all this time it’s hard to determine what’s real.”

So. Square one. I tried not to look too disappointed.

“Can we get back to the meeting?” Corey said, his voice cracking. I sat back in my chair.

Toby and I were flying blind. How to feed, how to handle his newly-heightened senses, how to disguise him, any fun Averus surprises--we were going to have to figure it all out on our own.

The only person who might have any real answers at this point was Nico. I’d been trying not to think about my appointment with him on Friday. Feeding Toby was one thing, but Nico--I didn’t know Nico.

I didn’t want to know Nico. I definitely didn’t want to ask him for any more favors.

But I wasn’t sure that I had a choice.