Page 21 of Mortal Shift
“Long story, but no. Come on, it’s this way.”
I fell into step beside her with a grateful smile, glad all over again that there was at least one person in this academy who was on my side. I palmed my neck again, and again my hand came away dry. Weird.
Ling side-eyed me.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Um, so this is a dumb question,” I said, feeling my cheeks color at the ridiculousness of it as I hurried along beside her. “But, well, there aren’t anyvampireshere, right?”
She threw her head back and laughed, then her eyes widened. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you knew…”
“Knew what?” Anxiety prickled at the back of my neck.
“Okay, there are three sectors here at Darkveil. You’re in with the shifters, so you know about them. Youdoknow about them?”
“Yeah.” My mind went back to last night. “I know about them.”
She nodded. “Shifters are the most numerous. Then there are the fae, they—”
“Fae?” I interrupted. “What’s a fae?”
“Um, fairfolk?” She glanced around and lowered her tone. “Fairies?”
“Fairies?” I snorted. “There are fairies here? Great. Just point me in the direction of Tinker Bell. She seems more my sort than Cole.”
“You don’t want to call them fairies to their face, trust me. But you have already met one of them.”
“I did?” I thought back, but there was nothing that struck me as having been a fairy, or a fae, or whatever. “Wait, do you mean you?”
That coaxed another laugh from her, and she shook her head. “No. I’m… something else. Davorin.”
I froze mid-step and blinked. “Davorin. He’s one of these…fae?”
And abruptly, I had zero intention of calling him a fairy to his face. Because just touching him had been enough for him to almost throttle the life from me, and, despite appearances, I didn’t have a death wish.
I swallowed my shock and caught up to Ling.
“Okay. Shifters, and fae. And the third sector?”
“Vampires, of course.”
“Of course.” Because after learning that Davorin was Tinker Bell incarnate, nothing else seemed even remotely unexpected. Guess my question hadn’t been quite so ridiculous, after all. Shit. I slapped at my neck again. “Wait. If one of them bites you, does that mean you become one?”
“One of them bit you already? Ugh. Assholes. But no. There’s a whole process. They drink your blood, you drink their blood, and, well— Oh, we’re here.”
I jerked my eyes from her face to see the door in front of her, and I could make out voices beyond. Crap. I was late. I swallowed hard. I’d worry about vampires later. I had bigger concerns than people wanting to drink my blood right now—which was not a thought I ever imagined I’d be having.
“See you later, Cali.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Ling.”
I pushed the door open and stepped through, and the entire room full of people fell silent and turned to stare at me.
Just great.
Chapter Eight
There had to be a hundred students in the room, and every one of them was staring at me, and whispering to the people seated with them. At the very front of the hall was an eerily beautiful, green-eyed woman with her hair scraped back from her face—which was creased in a deep scowl.
