"Whoa. That's got to be the only place worse than Montana."
A glint of something - maybe amusement - sparked in his eyes, but he didn't acknowledge the joke. "After I graduated, I was a guardian for a Zeklos lord. He was killed recently." His smile dropped, his face grew dark. "They sent me here because they needed extras on campus. When the princess turned up, they assigned me to her, since I'd already be around. Not that it matters until she leaves campus."
I thought about what he'd said before. Some Strigoi killed the guy he was supposed to have been guarding? "Did this lord die on your watch?"
"No. He was with his other guardian. I was away."
He fell silent, his mind obviously somewhere else. The Moroi expected a lot from us, but they did recognize that the guardians were - more or less - only human. So, guardians got pay and time off like you'd get in any other job. Some hard-core guardians - like my mom - refused vacations, vowing never to leave their Moroi's sides. Looking at Dimitri now, I had a feeling he might very well turn into one of those. If he'd been away on legitimate leave, he could hardly blame himself for what happened to that guy. Still, he probably did anyway. I'd blame myself too if something happened to Lissa.
"Hey," I said, suddenly wanting to cheer him up, "did you help come up with the plan to get us back? Because it was pretty good. Brute force and all that."
He arched an eyebrow curiously. Cool. I'd always wished I could do that. "You're complimenting me on that?"
"Well, it was a hell of a lot better than the last one they tried."
"Last one?"
"Yeah. In Chicago. With the pack of psi-hounds."
"This was the first time we found you. In Portland."
I sat up from my stretches and crossed my legs. "Um, I don't think I imagined psi-hounds. Who else could have sent them? They only answer to Moroi. Maybe no one told you about it."
"Maybe," he said dismissively. I could tell by his face he didn't believe that.
I returned to the novices' dorm after that. The Moroi students lived on the other side of the quad, closer to the commons. The living arrangements were partly based on convenience. Being here kept us novices closer to the gym and training grounds. But we also lived separately to accommodate the differences in Moroi and dhampir lifestyles. Their dorm had almost no windows, aside from tinted ones that dimmed sunlight. They also had a special section where feeders always stayed on hand. The novices' dorm was built in a more open way, allowing for more light.
I had my own room because there were so few novices, let alone girls. The room they'd given me was small and plain, with a twin bed and a desk with a computer. My few belongings had been spirited out of Portland and now sat in boxes around the room. I rummaged through them, pulling out a T-shirt to sleep in. I found a couple of pictures as I did, one of Lissa and me at a football game in Portland and another taken when I'd gone on vacation with her family, a year before the accident.
I set them on my desk and booted up the computer. Someone from tech support had helpfully given me a sheet with instructions for renewing my e-mail account and setting up a password. I did both, happy to discover no one had realized that this would serve as a way for me to communicate with Lissa. Too tired to write to her now, I was about to turn everything off when I noticed I already had a message. From Janine Hathaway. It was short:
I'm glad you're back. What you did was inexcusable.
"Love you too, Mom," I muttered, shutting it all down.
When I went to bed afterward, I passed out before even hitting the pillow, and just as Dimitri had predicted, I felt ten times worse when I woke up the next morning. Lying there in bed, I reconsidered the perks of running away. Then I remembered getting my ass kicked and figured the only way to prevent that from happening again was to go endure some more of it this morning.
My soreness made it all that much worse, but I survived the before-school practice with Dimitri and my subsequent classes without passing out or fainting.
At lunch, I dragged Lissa away from Natalie's table early and gave her a Kirova-worthy lecture about Christian - particularly chastising her for letting him know about our blood arrangement. If that got out, it'd kill both of us socially and I didn't trust him not to tell.
Lissa had other concerns.
"You were in my head again?" she exclaimed. "For that long?"
"I didn't do it on purpose," I argued. "It just happened. And that's not the point. How long did you hang out with him afterward?"
"Not that long. It was kind of...fun."
"Well, you can't do it again. If people find out you're hanging out with him, they'll crucify you." I eyed her warily. "You aren't, like, into him, are you?"
She scoffed. "No. Of course not.
"Good. Because if you're going to go after a guy, steal Aaron back." He was boring, yes, but safe. Just like Natalie. How come all the harmless people were so lame? Maybe that was the definition of safe.