Silver Shadows by Richelle Mead Read Free Book Online Page A

reaction to touching my hand, I tried to savethe other detainees the trouble of being near me and kept a respectful distance apart. We bottlenecked in the narrow hall, however, and the maneuvers some of them did to avoid bumping into me would’ve been comical in any other circumstances. Those not near me went out of their way to avoid eye contact and pretend I didn’t exist. Those forced to avoid contact fixed me with icy glares, and I was shocked to hear one whisper, “Slut.”
    I’d braced myself for a lot of things and expected to be called any number of names, but that one caught me off guard. I was surprised by how much it stung.
    I followed the crowd into a classroom and waited until all of them had sat down at desks, lest I choose the wrong one. When I finally selected an empty seat, the two people nearest me moved their desks away. They were probably twice my age, again giving it that twisted yet sad, comical quality. The suited Alchemist leading the class looked up sharply from his table when he heard the movement.
    “Elsa, Stuart. Those aren’t where your desks go.”
    Chagrined, the two of them slid their desks back to their neat rows as the Alchemist love of orderliness trumped its fear of evil. From the glares Elsa and Stuart gave me, though, it was clear they were now adding their reprimand to the list of sins I was guilty of.
    The instructor’s name was Harrison, again making me wonder if that was a first or a last. He was an older Alchemist with thinning white hair and a nasally voice whom I soon learned was here to teach us about current affairs. For a moment, I was excited, thinking I’d get some glimpse of the outside world. It soon became clear to me that this was a highly specialized look at current affairs.
    “What are we looking at?” he asked as a gruesome image of two girls with their throats ripped open appeared on a giant screen at the front of the class. Several hands went up, and he called on the one that had gone up first. “Emma?”
    “Strigoi attack, sir.”
    I’d known that and was more interested in Emma, my roommate. She was close to my age and sat so unnaturally straight in her desk that I was certain she was going to have back problems later on.
    “Two girls killed outside of a nightclub in St. Petersburg,” Harrison confirmed. “Neither of them even twenty.” The image changed to another grisly scene, this of an older man who’d obviously been drained of blood. “Budapest.” Then another image. “Caracas.” Another still. “Nova Scotia.” He turned the projector off and began pacing in front of the classroom. “I wish I could tell you these were from the last year. Or even the last month. But I’m afraid that’s not true. Anyone want to hazard a guess when these were taken?”
    Emma’s hand shot up. “Last week, sir?”
    “Correct, Emma. Studies show that Strigoi attacks have not decreased since this time last year. There’s some evidence they might be increasing. Why do you think this is?”
    “Because the guardians aren’t truly hunting them down as they should be?” That, again, was from Emma.
Oh my God
, I thought.
I’m rooming with the Sydney Sage of re-education.
    “That’s certainly one theory,” said Harrison. “Guardians are much more interested in protecting Moroi passively than actively seeking out Strigoi for the good of us all. In fact, when suggestions have been made to increase their numbers by recruiting at younger ages, the Moroi have selfishly declined.They apparently have enough to consider themselves safe and feel no need to help the rest of us.”
    I had to bite my tongue. I knew for a fact that wasn’t true. The Moroi were suffering from low guardian numbers because there was a shortage of dhampirs. Dhampirs couldn’t reproduce with other dhampirs. They had been born in an age when humans and Moroi freely mixed, and now their race was continued by Moroi mixing with dhampirs, which always resulted in dhampir children. It was a