“I’m Arman,” he whispered to her.

  She ignored him and tried to listen to what the teacher had to say, but she was having an awful time of it. What happened next surprised her even more. Ruric entered the class and raised his brows at Arman. He did know him! Just like she had suspected. Arman just shook his head at Ruric.

  Then Ruric looked at the teacher, who opened her mouth to speak. She paused, and then she said, “Ramon, please move to the seat in the back of the class. Thank you. Ruric, you can take Ramon’s seat.”

  A shuffling of seats ensued, and then Fiona was sitting between the two guys who’d been wearing tuxes last night—the one who Emma had run over with her mother’s car, and the other who had tried to steal Fiona away from the dance. She didn’t hear a thing the teacher said after that, knowing these guys meant real trouble for her.

  Ruric passed a note to her.

  She opened it up. What is your birth date? She glanced at him. He smiled.

  She wrote on the note: How do you know Arman?

  As soon as she passed the note to him, the teacher caught the action. Certain she would get chewed out, her cheeks warmed. Instead, the teacher gazed at Ruric, nodded, and continued with her lesson.

  Arman is like a brother to me, Ruric wrote back.

  She stared at the teacher, not believing she would ignore Ruric. Arman is a brother like Levka is to you? she wrote back, frowning.

  He handed the note back to her. You’re in danger.

  She eyed him, not believing her great aunt would say the same thing to her about Arman. Now Ruric, who was like a brother to him, gave her the very same warning?

  Because of Arman? she asked, hoping Arman didn’t catch sight of the note.

  Because of Tobias.

  Her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t trust Tobias one bit, but now she didn’t know what to think. Had Ruric risked his life by stepping out in front of the car to speak with her and befriend her, because he was worried about her? Or was he in league with Arman? The stalker? And possible ex-girlfriend murderer?

  We don’t know what Regina has told you, but we need to talk to you. We saw Clarissa here. She’s bad news. She doesn’t know we’re here yet, but if she learns we are, she’ll report back to Tobias at once, Ruric wrote.

  Fiona did what she never did when she was in class—she got up and walked out of the classroom. Her heart was beating way too fast, and she didn’t trust these guys any more than she trusted her great aunt, Clarissa, or the man who said he was her father. She really didn’t believe any of it. She wasn’t surprised when both Ruric and Arman headed out of the class after her.

  “Okay, listen,” Arman said, “you’re in grave danger.”

  And it wasn’t even Halloween any longer!

  Regina and Tobias were cunning vampires, and they might have persuaded Fiona that Arman was bad news.

  He understood Fiona’s disbelief. She felt she had no one to turn to, no one to trust. Even though Arman and his friends saw themselves as vampires who did good, the League of Vampires in some locations thought otherwise.

  "Listen," Arman said, "I came to protect you from them."

  "You staged the accident, so it looked like we'd killed you?" she asked Ruric, ignoring Arman’s comment and sounding outraged.

  "No. I was trying to get your friend's attention. She hit me before she saw me and before I could get out of the way," Ruric said.

  "Regina said you were stalking a girl and then she ended up mysteriously dead," Fiona said to Arman.

  "She lies. I don't have any girlfriends, nor have I tried to make any. I don't even attend high school," Arman said, defending himself.

  “Then why are you here? Ohmigod, what is going on?” Fiona wanted to call the police, but she knew they wouldn’t believe her about any of this. And if Arman hadn’t killed any girl, there would be no record of it either.

  "To protect you. There are more of us. Jasmine, Caitlin, Levka, and Stasio. We’re all here trying to make sure they don’t harm you," Arman said.

  "Arman came swooping in to save you, without wanting our help. We came with him to make sure Tobias, or the others, didn’t kill him,” Ruric said. “They mean to steal your power before the blood moon and your eighteenth birthday.”

  "I shouldn't be missing class," Fiona finally said, trying to rationalize that these two guys were crazy, and she should be in class where she could be safer. "Wait, what do you mean I have powers?”

  “You’re supposed to be a hunter, but you can telepathically communicate with me.” They needed to get her out of there now, but Arman knew if they tried, she would believe she was being kidnapped by a couple of really weird dudes.

  “What?” she asked.

  “When you were in your bedroom last night. I was trying to get you to let me in,” Arman said. “We were talking…like this.” He realized she would think he had just spoken to her out loud. So he tried again. “My lips aren’t moving. I’m talking to you telepathically now.”

  Fiona laughed. “Oh, you’re a ventriloquist.”

  “Look at me,” Ruric said. “We are talking to you telepathically.”

  “We’re coming,” Jasmine said. “I just got a bathroom break. The same with Caitlin. Where are you guys? In Fiona’s classroom or outside of it?”

  “By the bathrooms near her classroom,” Arman said.

  Fiona was staring at him. Yep, Jasmine’s talking inside of Fiona’s head got her attention.

  Then Jasmine and Caitlin were hurrying down the hallway to meet up with them. “I’m Jasmine,” she said, offering her hand.

  Fiona didn’t shake it.

  “Caitlin,” Caitlin said. “We really need to get out of here before Clarissa learns what we’re up to.”

  “What are you up to?” Fiona asked.

  Stasio and Levka soon joined them. Levka said, “Saving you from vampires who want you either to join them or they intend to kill you. You’re cursed and we need to learn how to break it before they can use it for their own good.”

  8

  “I don’t know you, any of you,” Fiona said, her heart racing. This was all just a new nightmare to her.

  “Once they learn we’re here to protect you,” Stasio said, “Regina and Tobias will make sure you never return to school. They’ll keep you locked up and guarded at all times.”

  Arman swept Fiona up in his arms and vanished.

  Fiona didn’t know what had just happened. One minute she was standing in the hallway of her school, talking to a bunch of teens she didn’t know who said they were intent on saving her, and then she was in a black void and now lying on a couch in a house she didn’t recognize.

  Appearing genuinely worried about her, Arman frowned as he stood next to the couch, looking down at her. “I’m sorry. I had to do that so that we could talk privately and before Clarissa learned we were there. I didn’t kill some girl at a high school. And I’ve never been a stalker. They made it all up, afraid I would show up to try and protect you.”

  Then the others arrived, and she just stared at them. They weren’t there, then they were, like a transporter beam had transported them there without the spaceship, weird transporter sounds, or bright, glittery lights.

  “Regina, Tobias, and Clarissa are vampires. Ruthless kinds,” Arman said. “They believe you have an ability they can exploit.”

  “Vampires? You can’t be serious. And for your information, I don’t have any powers.” Fiona rubbed her forehead. “What are you then? You just appeared before me like magic.”

  “We’re vampires also,” Arman said. “But we’re the good guys. We help humans or hunters or vampires in need. Tobias only wants power. We came here, well, I came here to help you because I’ve been having visions and dreams of you and you’re in the worst kind of danger. In the visions, I’m there, saving you. But then a blond-haired man had also come to me and warned me that I had to protect you before the blood moon. My friends came also to assist me and you. I know it’s a lot to take in all at once, but it’s the truth.”

  Fiona folded her arms. “I won’t believe any of this unless you prove it to me.”

  Arman exposed his long, sharp canines. Fiona gaped at the sight of them, then she closed her mouth. They had to be fake. Though he hadn’t talked as though he had some kind of pretend extended fangs that might affect his speech. Of course, some went as far as to actually have vampire fang implants that were permanent. She glanced at the others. “Well?”

  Levka gave her a smile, showing his off. Perfectly wicked looking. But she didn’t accept that any of this was real. Were they members of some cult who had dental work to make them appear to have vampire fangs to live the life as “vampires?” Not real ones, of course.

  Ruric and Stasio showed off theirs. And then Jasmine went next. But Caitlin wasn’t showing hers off.

  “I saved Caitlin’s life,” Levka explained. “She’s more newly turned so showing off her fangs isn’t something she has had a lot of control over.”

  “But I’m a witch also, and that makes up for what I lack in the vampire department,” Caitlin said, turning herself invisible and then visible again.

  If Fiona had had something to drink or eat here, she might have thought she was hallucinating. “Open your mouths.”

  Everyone did, but the fangs were gone. She blinked—twice.

  “We conceal them. We normally only show them off when we’re angry or in a fight,” Arman said. “There’s no need to otherwise. Except for show and tell.”

  “Or to drink someone’s blood,” she said.

  “We have our own vampire blood banks,” Ruric explained. “Humans donate their blood, we pay them for it, but no one even knows that vampires are using it. Everyone’s happy.”

  “You’re not going to drink my blood?” Fiona asked, thinking back to the curse. They might get sick or something if they drank her blood, if any of this was true.

  “No. We’re here to save you, but I think we ought to be leaving,” Arman said.

  The others all looked at him and she swore something was being communicated between them, but she wasn’t getting the message. “I’m still in the room.”

  “Will you go with us? The blood moon is nearly here, just a few days away. That’s when they will convince you to be one of them, or they’ll eliminate you,” Arman said.

  That made her think back to what Tobias and Regina had been talking about earlier.

  Stasio disappeared and reappeared with a book.

  “We normally don’t do that,” Ruric said, motioning to Stasio. “We just walk into the next room and bring the book back here.”

  “Time is of the essence,” Stasio said. “That girl who was supposed to be watching out for you will soon learn you’re not at school and report back to Tobias and Regina. They will call up their people to locate you.”

  “People. The others at the Halloween party who disappeared so strangely,” Fiona said. None of it still made any sense, but maybe that’s why Regina and the others seemed so…strange. “What about my brother, Justin?”

  “He’s dead. They killed him and your parents,” Arman said.

  Tears filled Fiona’s eyes. “No.”

  “Yes,” Levka said. “Arman is telling you the truth. They had to get you away from your family.”

  “Regina lied about all of it, the car accident, leaving out the part that your brother isn’t alive either,” Arman said.

  Fiona quickly wiped away tears.

  Then everyone looked at Levka and she swore they were talking to each other in secret again.

  Fiona let out her breath in a huff. “I’m still in the room.”

  “We’re going to take you somewhere safe until we can leave for a place even farther away. Once the blood moon has passed, you’ll be safe,” Levka said.

  “You’re planning to take me where?” Fiona asked.

  “Dallas,” Arman said.

  “Don’t tell me, we have to leave our luggage behind,” Jasmine said, sounding exasperated.

  “We each have backpacks. Hurry and pack what you can in those and we’ll leave,” Levka said.

  “What if I don’t want to go with you?” Not that Fiona wanted to stay with Regina and Tobias, especially after hearing what these…vampires had to say about them, if it was all true—but what if it wasn’t?

  “You don’t have to go with us,” Jasmine said. “They saved my life too. I didn’t have to go with them, but it was either that and help watch their backs as they watched mine or fend for myself on my own. I’m known as a vampire assassin, so I can usually take care of myself. I eliminate rogue vampires. But I wouldn’t have made it on my own that time. They didn’t take me with them because they had to. They did it because they wanted to keep me safe.”

  “Dallas is where—” Fiona hesitated to finish her words. She thought her brother was at the college there. “Are you sure my brother is dead?”

  Stasio disappeared and reappeared, handing her a newspaper. “I’m the historian of the bunch, but I also researched all about you when Arman said he was having visions of you.”

  She glanced again at Arman. She remembered vague visions, surreal, oddball dreams, nightmares too, and Arman looked like the man of those dreams. And she remembered more—kissing him and feeling safe in his arms. “Alright, but when we get to Dallas, I want to speak to the police about my brother.”

  “We can certainly make arrangements for that,” Levka said.

  “What about my clothes?” Fiona asked, as the others packed their backpacks.

  “You can use our money to buy whatever you need when we reach our destination,” Levka said.

  Then, before she was ready to move again, Arman wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll be stopping a few times because it’s too far to travel in a day for us.”

  “Next stop, Nevada,” Levka said, and then they all vanished.

  They were flying, Fiona realized, but she couldn’t see anyone or herself even. They were just soaring above the world, the wind in their faces, clouds cloaking them, Arman’s arms around her, keeping her safe.

  “Caitlin made us invisible so that we can fly without anyone seeing us,” Arman said. “Normally, we would only fly at night. Another thing we need to mention to you. Your family—mother, father, and brother—weren’t blood relations.”

  “What?” The story kept changing. Okay, so Regina had told Fiona that her father hadn’t been her father, and her brother was a half brother, but she’d said her mother was her mother. “Regina told me my father wasn’t really my father, but my mother was really my mother.”

  “Regina lied.”

  Fiona didn’t know what to believe anymore. “She said Tobias was my father.”

  “Another lie. Tobias isn’t either,” Arman said again. “And Regina isn’t related to you at all.”

  “I didn’t believe Tobias was. Regina? I’m glad she’s not. But my mother and Justin?” This was just too unreal. Yet Fiona had often thought that she didn’t look like anyone in the family, her mother, father, and brother having had dark hair and eyes while she had blond hair and green eyes.

  “No. He wasn’t any relation to you, and the woman who claimed she was your mother wasn’t either,” Arman said. “You were placed with the family for safekeeping.”

  “My father, or the man pretending to be my father, was a drunk. He beat my mother. How would my real parents have thought that was a safe place for me to grow up? Wait, so if my parents placed me with them, are they alive?” Fiona hoped that she still had a family.

  “It’s possible. We’ll use every resource available to us to learn the truth,” Arman said. “I don’t know why they would have picked that particular family to be your foster parents. They probably didn’t know about your foster father’s alcohol problem and other abuses.”

  Fiona didn’t entirely trust these people.

  Then Arman started explaining how he and the other guys with him had been turned into vampires by the Black Death, but that some had survived as humans, and others were hunters of rogue vampires.

  “But Jasmine is a vampire, and she hunts vampires,” Fiona said, at least so they said.

  “Right.” Arman explained about the League of Vampires in various places in the States and also around the world.

  When they finally arrived in Nevada, they stayed at a five-star hotel in Las Vegas, and this was where it got kind of dicey. Arman wanted to stay with Fiona. She wasn’t staying with anyone but a female. Caitlin was obviously with Levka who had mentioned saving her life, and Fiona could see that Stasio was with Jasmine. But both ladies said they would stay with her and keep her safe.

  Fiona was glad for it. She hadn’t ever had a decent relationship with a guy before and she wasn’t going to jump into one like this when she still wasn’t sure about these people. They were vampires! What if Arman wanted to feed off her in the middle of the night? At least she thought she would feel safer with Caitlin and Jasmine.

  Fiona suddenly remembered that she had left Emma behind without a word that she was going to disappear. “What about my friend?” She felt terrible that she’d forgotten all about Emma.

  “We were in her class,” Jasmine said, “and we convinced her that you didn’t exist.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t go back there. It’s too dangerous for you.” Jasmine abruptly changed the topic. “Let’s go. We need to shop and pick up what you need in the line of clothes and personal items.”

  “They had to do the same thing with my foster parents and foster sister,” Caitlin told Fiona, sounding sympathetic. “That way no one’s looking for us, thinking we were kidnapped, or were just runaways.”

  “What about school?” All this was just sinking in for Fiona.

  “I am taking advanced college-level witch’s training,” Caitlin said. “All online. We can find an online curriculum for you too. Regular education, of course. Not witch’s training.”

  “The Black Death was a long time ago. How long have you been with them?” Fiona asked them as they found a shop to go into that had extravagantly-priced jeans and jackets—really high dollar items. She was going to leave, but Jasmine stopped her.