Sleeping Beauty by Maureen McGowan Read Free Book Online

and Mom have”—she took a deep breath to calm her nerves—“true love?”
    Her father looked as if he’d been struck by lightning, then his eyes turned glassy. “Lucette, your mother is the most beautiful and quick-witted woman I’ve ever met. And the way she used to look at me . . .” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I love your mother. I do. Very much. But perhaps she was too young when we wed. Perhaps she wishes she’d had more time on her own first.” He looked away, and Lucette could feel waves of sadness drifting from him.
    She rounded his desk and sat on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his velvet jacket. “Don’t be sad, Daddy.”
    It was clear he loved her mother, or at least he had before the curse ruined everything, before she’d ruined everything. Lucette had to make up for that. From now on, she’d try harder to please her parents and make them happy.

    The next week, Lucette leaned over the balcony railing above the school gymnasium to see the action below. Her hands itched to hold one of those big sticks the boys were thrusting and swinging as they leaped around the gym. Even though this was an advanced class, some of them were complete klutzes.

    Others weren’t.
    A tall blond boy, about sixteen from the looks of him, was completing an obstacle course and Lucette couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He climbed nearly twenty-five feet up a rope, the muscles in his bare back and shoulders flexing and straining as he moved impossibly fast. Reaching the top, he swung the rope to gain momentum and height, and then released it as he propelled himself toward an even higher platform. As he landed, Lucette sucked in a quick breath, watching how the strong muscles in his legs flexed. He sprang again, this time executing a flip in the air, and landed on another platform. A straw-filled dummy shot skyward. He picked up a stake and leaped to stab it midair.
    The stake went straight through the dummy’s chest and the boy landed on the gymnasium floor.
    Lucette lifted her hands to clap, but noticed that no one else did. The other girls had all turned their heads or covered their eyes, as if real blood had been spilled instead of just a little straw. Wimps.
    Miss Eleanor stepped up beside her. “You see now, don’t you?” Lucette studied a group of boys about to start a sparring exercise and lifted her arm to mimic their stance. “See what?”
    â€œThat slaying is no job for girls,” Miss Eleanor said, a smug look on her face.
    Lucette dropped her arms. “No, I don’t see that at all. Look at him.” She pointed at a skinny boy struggling to push a huge block of stone across the room. “I’ll bet I’m stronger than he is.”
    â€œThey all have their specialties, Lucy. That boy is the fastest in this group at rope climbing. He can scale a three-story building in thirty-two seconds.”

    â€œSo could I, I’ll bet. If someone would just give me the chance.”
    Miss Eleanor pushed back from the railing. “Bringing you girls up here was a mistake.” She shook her head. “I hoped that by showing you the brutality of the boys in action, you’d come to your senses.”
    She had come to her senses. Nearly every night vampires roamed Xandra looking for necks to bite, and Lucette now felt sure that the vampire boy she met in the woods had been the exception, not the rule. Vampires were vicious, and in only three years she might find herself facing them alone. She wished her father would declare war like her mother wanted, but while he’d reinstated the slayer army for defensive purposes, he still refused to declare war on Sanguinia. He was determined to find a diplomatic solution.
    She shuddered. The possibility that her father might find a solution someday didn’t make it any less horrible for the nightly vampire victims. And if the curse