I definitely shouldn’t have gone to that party last night, Amanda thought. Oh, and vampires are real. She checked her phone, lying on the pillow next to her: 6:58 AM. Two minutes until she had to get up for school. Whose bright idea was it to have a bonfire on a school night?

She thought back to what had happened after the scream. Everything felt a bit hazy.

The first thing she remembered was her immense embarrassment, having immediately grabbed Isaac’s arm in terror. He hadn’t shaken her off, though.

Amidst the chaos of scattering partygoers trying to extinguish the bonfire, Vincent’s voice had been low and worried, directed towards Isaac.

“Get her home safely. The woods can be dangerous this time of night.”

Then he had turned away, disappearing into the panicking crowds. Amanda noticed Sydney and Nicolae hurrying after him, her cousin’s earlier confidence wiped from her face. It didn’t make Amanda feel any better.

Isaac’s expression, still full of mistrust for Vincent, had softened when he saw the fear in her eyes.

“Come on, Amanda. We should leave.” Isaac had put a gentle arm around her shoulders. She didn’t realize she had been trembling until he started to guide her slowly down the path to the village. The rest had been a blur, rushed goodbyes to everyone she had met and a quiet entrance back through Luiza’s window.

Now safe in her bed, Amanda groaned. Isaac probably thought she was such an idiot, freezing up like that. Way to impress her cute neighbor. And she had barely gotten a chance to talk to Vincent.

It was kind of odd, she thought. How protective Vincent had seemed after the scream. Why was he so worried about Amanda getting home? Did that scream have anything to do with the vampires? And what was Sydney’s deal? She pondered over her cousin’s mysterious mention of the “blue moon.” The moon had been awfully bright last night. Maybe Sydney was telling the truth.

She still wasn’t sure who had screamed.

Regardless, Amanda knew she should have listened to Parker’s warning. She wasn’t used to breaking the rules, and it left a bad taste in her mouth.

BEEP!

Her phone alarm nearly scared the life out of her.

Amanda was hit by a wave of nausea. Her parents would have been so disappointed in her sneaking out. It wasn’t like she’d lived as a nun in Minnesota, but her parents had always been careful to warn her about the dangers of risk taking.

So how did the most cautious people you knew get killed on a camping trip they had taken dozens of times before? An irritating voice in her head reminded her.

Frustrated, Amanda brushed a tear out of her eye. Sometimes her ADD sent her into inescapable thought-spirals, but now was not the time to feel bad for herself.

In the closet, Amanda found a week’s worth of preppy Hathaway uniforms: crisp white button-downs paired with a matching navy-blue skirt and jacket. Up close, Amanda identified the bronze Hathaway insignia embroidered on the jacket pocket as two swords crossed beneath a circle.

She frowned as she reluctantly peeled off her comfy pajamas. Hathaway was going to be nothing like art school.

Outside Luiza’s, Amanda spotted Isaac slamming the door to his house while cursing under his breath, his lush wavy hair still tousled with sleep. When he noticed her awkward gaze, he gave a hasty chuckle that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“My dad found out about me sneaking out last night,” he called, crossing over to her side of the yard. “He wasn’t too happy.”

“Yikes.” Amanda wasn’t quite sure how to comfort her companion, especially after her embarrassing display of fear at the bonfire. Maybe he wouldn’t remember.

“It’s fine. It’s happened before.” Isaac rolled his eyes. “Anyways, how are you? We can walk together ‘til the town square.”

Amanda winced. Yeah, he remembered. “You mean after what happened last night?”

“Yeah, you were like…totally frozen. I was worried.”

“I was really scared,” she confessed as they trudged up the street. “I didn’t realize how afraid of the woods I was until I heard that scream. It…it made me think of my parents.”

“What about your parents?” Isaac’s brow furrowed.

Well here comes the sob story, Amanda thought.

“They were killed in a bear attack about a month ago. It’s why I moved here with my uncle.” Amanda looked down at the cobbled road. It was still hard for her to admit her parents’ deaths to herself, let alone to other people.

“Oh man…that’s awful. I’m so sorry.” Isaac sighed. “No wonder you were freaked out. I would have been terrified.”

“Yeah,” Amanda continued. It felt good to finally open up. “I was at school when it happened. The worst part is they were super experienced hikers. That camping trip should have been no problem, but it cost them their lives. And here I am, just…it was so stupid. I shouldn’t have gone out at all. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She bit her lip as hot tears blurred the corners of her vision.

Abruptly, Isaac stopped and pulled Amanda into a warm hug as a tear trickled down her cheek. His hand stroking her back, she took a deep breath, his sweet scent tickling her nose.

“For what it’s worth, I lost my mom when I was a kid, and it was pretty difficult, too,” Isaac murmured. Amanda pulled back, sniffling.

“How did she die?”

“Car accident. She was with my dad at the time. He hasn’t…I don’t think he’ll ever be the same.”

Amanda caught a glimmer of hard anger in Isaac’s eye, the same look he’d had the last time she asked about his father. She remembered Tatiana’s comment: It’s a good thing Isaac’s dad is an alcoholic.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said carefully, not wanting to push him. “Is that when you moved to Lunovia?”

Isaac turned and began a slow gait up the slanted cobblestone. When he spoke, it was with a measured calm. “My dad is doing some investigative journaling here. That’s why we came.”

Something about his expression told Amanda that Isaac wasn’t telling her everything.

Since Parker lived at the school and couldn’t drive her like yesterday, Amanda walked the short distance to Hathaway through the woods alone, jumping anxiously at every sound. In the daytime, the forest floor swirled with tendrils of fog, almost obscuring the path ahead of her.

By the time Amanda heaved her way through the front doors, she was sure she looked a mess, eyes red from crying and hair frizzy from the damp forest. It didn’t help that her ridiculously glamorous classmates all stared as she hurried to her first class. She tried to keep her head down. Did they recognize her from last night?

Calculus was across the school and up several flights of stairs, and Amanda barely made it on time, huffing and puffing as she skidded into the arched, stone classroom.

Two dozen dazzling eyes looked up immediately. Apparently vampires are very punctual, Amanda mused. From among the rows of dark wooden desks, she spotted Sydney leering.

At the front of the room, a tall, reedy woman with a tight bun coughed.

“Um, hi,” Amanda began, eyeing her math teacher uneasily.

“You must be Miss Rogers,” the woman drawled. “My name is Professor Donahue. You will quickly find that calculus is the same for our kind as it is for yours. Please take the open seat over there.” She gestured to an empty desk and Amanda’s breath caught when she recognized her neighbor.

Vincent’s perfect lips turned up into a sultry smile as Amanda took her seat next to him. She could practically feel the heat of Sydney’s glare burning from the other side of the room but kept her head high.

“Hey,” she whispered, turning her body to face him. “Sorry we didn’t get to hang last night.”

“Me too,” Vincent murmured. He leaned closer and a few strands of dark hair fell forward. “Maybe later we can -”

“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!”

Amanda shrieked as the classroom exploded with noise and flashing red lights. Around her, the other students jumped up from their desks in panic. Within seconds, the door banged open and Parker burst in, eyes flashing.

“Students, please return to your dormitories. Sunshine Beckett is missing from campus and we are now in lockdown.”

Several students gasped. Amanda had never seen her uncle look so stressed.

“Damn it,” Vincent growled. “I knew something was up when I didn’t see her at the bonfire.” Amanda recalled Sunshine as the friendly, purple-haired vampire she had met on her tour. What did Parker mean, missing?

“What’s going on?” she stammered.

“Lockdown,” Vincent explained. “Means someone lost control, went missing, and we can’t leave the dorms until the staff finds them.”

“Lost control?”

Students began rushing out of the classroom. The beeping had stopped, but the flashing lights continued. Eyes wide, Amanda followed Vincent to the door.

“This had better not be a repeat of the Marco Capreanu incident,” someone muttered, wheeling through the crowd. It was Tariq, Iacob’s crush.

The what? Amanda wanted to ask. Before she could, a strong arm pulled her away from the rush of vampires.

“Amanda, you’re not safe on your own right now,” Parker said, forehead creased with worry. “Last night was a blue moon, and Sunshine might have given in to her instincts.”

There was that blue moon thing again, Amanda thought. “What does that mean?”

“It’s a phenomenon that happens on the second full moon in a given month. We’ve found that young vampires seem to get particularly volatile then. Almost always, they can resist, but if their urges are too strong, they become completely feral, losing all essence of their normal selves.”

Amanda could hardly imagine Sunshine, whom Sydney had described as a “total hippie”, becoming feral. “Is that what happened to Sunshine?”

Parker sighed. “It’s possible. No one has seen her since dinner yesterday. If she escaped from Hathaway, she’s an immense danger to everyone in the village, including you.”

Amanda bit her lip, feeling even worse about sneaking out than she had earlier.

“Should I go back to Luiza’s?” she asked.

“No,” Parker said firmly. “It’s not safe to go through the woods.” He paused and let out a slow breath.

“You’re going to have to spend the night at Hathaway.”