ReVamped by Lucienne Diver Read Free Book Online Page B

reach her.
    We hit it seconds later, almost running into Bella, who now stood on the walkway looking lost.
    “My car, this way,” I said, pretending to be winded like them.
    We raced for the parking lot. My clunker was so old I had to use a key to let myself in and manually open the other locks. It cost us. The principal had stopped at the edge of the lot, but the cops were breathing down our necks one row away when I slammed the car into gear and backed out at ludicrous speed. Bella didn’t even have her door fully shut. It scraped against the much nicer car next to mine. I’d pay for it later—Agents Stick and Stuffed would, anyway. I wondered how they’d feel about me running from the law.
    “Whoo hoo!” Ulric said as we shot out of the lot like a bat outta hell. “Way to go, Gen.”
    I rolled my eyes at the rearview mirror. “Yeah, because running from the cops doesn’t make us look at all guilty. Bella, what were you thinking?”
    “That it’s all my fault. I tried to get through the day, but I have to see Bram. To tell him I’m sorry.”
    “Bella, we keep telling you it isn’t your fault. You want to blame someone, blame octo-jock,” I said.
    “Octo-jock?” Ulric asked, amused.
    “Yeah, too many tentacles.”
    “I knew I liked you.”
    I looked away from the warmth of his smile. I felt good and bad all at the same time. Part of me had the warm fuzzies about being part of a group again. I hadn’t realized how much I liked high school and my clique until they were taken away from me, but then I froze up at the remembrance that this was a role I was playing. I couldn’t afford friendships that could cloud my judgment, and I’d be moving on when all was said and done. The thought stung more than it should have. These weren’t my people, I told myself—no color palette, death poetry, so many piercings I wondered why they didn’t spring a leak. It didn’t help, but I might as well get used to it. I had an eternal lifetime of good-byes to look forward to.
    “I don’t know what got into those guys,” Lily said. “I mean, Nat’s always been a putz, but Kevin’s usually pretty decent … for a jock.”
    “Something in the water,” Ulric answered, joking, but I made a mental note. “A lot of weirdness going on. And I’m not just talking about Lily’s love life.”
    “Bite me, Toby ,” she snapped back. There was silence, and I felt like some kind of line had been crossed. Finally, Lily said, “Sorry.”
    Ulric nodded tersely, and we sat in silence for the rest of the ride.

6

    It was a straight shot up Route 9 and probably wouldn’t have taken long if it hadn’t been for the zillion traffic lights. We might not have hit them all, but we gave it our best shot. We passed two malls without even turning in, and that almost killed me all over again. I only managed because I was thinking of Bram, his perfect skull bashed in, lying in a coma. I wondered what a sip of vampire blood could do for him. But if we didn’t finish the ritual blood exchange, would it kill him? Or make him stronger? They hadn’t covered that in spy school. I doubted it was because they didn’t have the answer—they probably knew more about us than we did ourselves.
    That was what held us, beyond the fact that the Feds knew our identities and could hunt us down if we chose to bolt instead of cooperate. They knew things they hadn’t yet shared. Things like the key to the sunscreen potion used in our bottled blood. Maybe even what Bobby’s dam, the wench Mellisande, had done to her own sire Alistaire to twist him nearly beyond recognition, and how to reverse it.
    As Alistaire stood when I’d last seen him, as he stood now , he was a danger to everyone. A triple threat—psychic, unstoppable, and mad as a hatter—but I couldn’t forget that he’d let me live, temporarily anyway. He did sort of imply that all bets were off should our paths cross again. Maybe even that he was going to do his very best to make that