Eddie had on his fiercest mini-Dimitri expression. “You don’t think we’re letting you two do all this alone, do you?”
I tried not to smile. “I think school’s still in session and that your first priority is to Jailbait.”
“Only for another week or so,” said Jill. “And we’re just doing finals now. You should take one of the dhampirs. Two of them, actually. Angeline can stay with me.”
“Hey,” Angeline exclaimed. “How come I don’t get to go kick Alchemist ass?”
“Because you’re the only one of us who hasn’t actually finished high school,” Eddie told her.
“But all of you are assigned to protect Jill,” I warned. “And you’re staying with her, at least for now. Marcus and I don’t need bodyguards to go visit some partying kids at ASU.”
Conflict warred over Eddie’s features. “But what happens after that? What about when you find where Sydney is?” I could guess his worries. He was torn. His assignment—and his heart—bound him to Jill. But Sydney was his friend too, and he still felt guilty for her loss in the first place.
“We don’t know when that’ll be. School might be done then, and we’ll all be back at Court.” I patted his shoulder. “Let us worry about Carly and even Keith. When we get to the next phase … well, we’ll figure it out.”
Eddie didn’t look happy about that, but really, there was no outcome that he would’ve been okay with. If he came with us tomorrow, he would be eaten with guilt for abandoning Jill. No part of this situation was going to be easy on him.
Marcus left early, once he and I had our arrangements in place for the trip to Tempe. The others lingered, wanting to catch up and share what had happened over the last few weeks. I blurred the details on my descent into decadence at Court, too ashamed to let them know I’d nearly lost Sydney. Only Jill knew the truth, and she’d never give me up. She did, however, give up something else.
“Hey, Trey,” she said, eyes full of mischief. “Maybe you should give Adrian that very important piece of mail.”
A matching grin lit Trey’s face as he jumped up and hurried to the kitchen. When he returned, he handed over a business-sized envelope that had been opened. It was from Carlton College, addressed to me.
“You opened my mail?” I exclaimed.
“I told him to,” Jill said, as though she had some kind of authorization. “Check it out.”
Puzzled, I lifted a single piece of paper and found myself staring at my first college report card. Even more amazing than that, I saw that I had passed all my classes. C, C-, and B-. That last one made me raise an eyebrow.
“How the hell did I pull off a B-in oils? What did you turn in for my final project?” I asked them incredulously.
“I picked it,” Trey said proudly. “It was that tall one you had leaning in the corner, the kind of weird yellow-and-purple-cloud thing.”
A lump formed in my throat. “Sydney’s aura,” I murmured. I set the report card down and hugged Jill and Trey. “You guys saved me. I wouldn’t have passed without you.”
“You saved you,” Jill murmured in my ear. “And now you’re going to save her.”
She and the others left soon thereafter, as Amberwood’s curfew loomed. Neil lingered after the rest had walked out the door and strolled back to me. “Adrian,” he said, unable to meet my eyes, “I don’t suppose Olive was at Court, was she?”
I was sympathetic to everyone in love, and my heart went out to him. “No, but Nina was. Olive’s been out of touch with her too, but Nina’s checked in dreams, and Olive’s okay. She just wants some time on her own to think things through. It can’t be easy having come back from being a Strigoi.”
Relief flooded Neil’s angular features. “Really? That’s great. I mean … it’s not great that she’s troubled, but I thought it was something to do with me. We’d gotten along so well, stayed in touch … then nothing.”
“Nope,” I assured him. “Nina says Olive cut off everyone. Give her time. She’ll come around. From what I briefly saw, she was pretty crazy for you.”
Neil actually turned red at that, and I laughingly sent him on to join the others. Trey returned to his homework, and I began regular checks of trying to find Sydney asleep. At one point, Trey offered to give me the bedroom back, but I told him I’d be up off and on anyway. Better for him to be rested for exams and his scholarship prospects.
That eventually left me alone in the living room, and around midnight, I finally connected to Sydney. We met in the Getty Villa, and I swept her to my arms, not fully realizing until that moment how afraid I’d been that last night’s dream encounter had been a fluke. “Before I start kissing you and forget everything reasonable, tell me how long you’ve been asleep.”
She rested her golden head against my chest. “I don’t know. Less than an hour.”
“Hmm.” I brushed that beautiful hair back as I crunched numbers. “I thought you were on Pacific time, based on when you woke up. That would’ve been around, oh, five here. But that’s not very much sleep. Six hours. Maybe seven.”
“Actually, that’s about perfect for them,” she said. “It’s one of the things they do to keep us on edge. We get enough sleep to function, but we never quite feel rested enough. It makes us agitated, more susceptible to what they do and tell us.”
I nearly let the comment slide, but the word choice caught me. “What do you mean ‘one of the things?’” I asked her. “What else do they do?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We have other—”
“It does matter,” I insisted, leaning closer to her. I’d tried bringing this up before, and she kept evading the topic. “You said yourself that place pushed Keith over the edge, and I see the way Marcus looks whenever he talks about re-education.”
“A little sleep deprivation is nothing,” she said, still not directly addressing what I wanted.
“What else are they doing?” I demanded.
Fire flared briefly in her eyes. “What would you do if I told you? Would it make you work harder to find me?”
“I’m already—”