2. Darkness in the Blood Master copy MS 5 by Vicki Keire

was somehow more deafening than all the noise had been. I angled my body and pitched my voice so it would carry across the darkened auditorium, appealing directly to the students now. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” I was about to suggest we take up a collection for her family, or send flowers or something, but his flashing blue eyes stopped my thoughts right in their tracks. Eyes so blue could not be natural; concepts like ocean and sky slid right off them like oil on Teflon. I thought, instead, of jungle predators in the dark, just before they consumed their prey. My breathing was labored and slow. I couldn’t remember what I had been about to say.
    “Miss Chastain is an idealist.” His voice was at once loud enough to carry across the entire auditorium and soft enough to feel like an intimate whisper right beside my ear. “She sees injustice, and wants to act against it. Admirable.” The class tittered. “Mrs. Kenner was an unfortunate victim, attacked by dark and terrible forces against which she had no defense. It’s a sad fact that most individuals have little or no defense, should those same dark and terrible forces,” he strode to the very edge of the podium, “choose to strike at them. Do you understand, Miss Chastain?”
    What the hell? I staggered back, hitting the edge of my desk with my thighs. All I meant was that we should send her a fruit basket or something. He was treating me like I’d suggested a vigilante mob start stringing up random citizens. I tried again to make myself understood. “That may be true,” I heard myself say. “But surely we can do something. Mrs. Kenner has been a teacher here for years and years. She is one of us.” An instinct I didn’t analyze made me put a slight but distinct emphasis on the last three words. One of us . Dr. Christian’s finely arched eyebrows shot up. “Or else…”
    “Or else what?” he echoed softly, almost mockingly. “It is comforting to think we can somehow protect the ones we love from all harm, Miss Chastain, but it is naïve. A child’s comfort.” The class shrunk to waves of noise around me, rising and receding like ripples in a smooth pond, pelted with stones.
    My throat had gone as dry as sandpaper. Did no one else find this one-on-one conversation exceedingly strange? He smiled, his perfectly shaped mouth twisting suddenly into a single sharp slash before smoothing out again into full curving lines. He prowled along the edge of the podium, his movements almost liquid in their grace. “Miss Chastain, as much as I am enjoying your charming conversational powers, you are holding up my class.”
    I realized abruptly that the entire class was watching our exchange. Roughly a hundred faces, ranging from curious to openly hostile, stared at me. I felt my face flame crimson. Most of them held a packet of papers impatiently; behind them, on the movie-theatre sized projection screen, Dr. Christian waited in front of a glowing screen.
    Great. He was going to teach by PowerPoint, too. I had a feeling there would be absolutely nothing resembling “Organized Group Sleep” in his class, though.
    A crew-cut young man wearing expensive hiking clothes that looked as if they had never seen a day of actual hiking nudged me roughly. He held out a stack of papers to me as if he’d rather touch a plague victim. I snatched them, glaring at Dr. Christian, and slid into my seat with as much dignity as I could manage.
    He smiled back, soft and wild and perfectly beautiful. The afternoon of Logan’s accident tugged insistently at a corner of my memory. I badly wanted to get out of here. I needed to talk to people. I longed for Ethan or Logan, or even grumpy Mr. Markov and sharp Mrs. Alice. I wanted to feel the safety and support of my own personal circle of Light. But I felt light-headed and dizzy. Underneath my desk, my legs shook. I smoothed the packet of papers out across my desk. Most of all, I needed to calm down before I erupted into