This was the first of what would be our weekly Sunday dinners. Every second I could be back with my family in the faculty apartment instead of surrounded by Evernight kids was good with me. Even though they were trying to act all casual about it, I could tell that my parents had missed me almost as much as I’d missed them. Duke Ellington was on the stereo, and despite the parental interrogation, everything was again right with the world.

“Things didn’t get out of hand, did they?” Mom had apparently decided to ignore the fact that I’d denied being there. “From what I heard, it was mostly beer and music.”

“Not that I know of.” It wasn’t really a denial; I mean, I did only attend the party for about fifteen minutes.

Dad shook his head and said to Mom, “It doesn’t matter if it was just beer. The rules have to be obeyed, Celia. I don’t worry about Bianca, but some of the others—”

“I’m not against rules. But it’s natural for the older students to rebel against them occasionally. Better to have a few minor slipups from time to time than some major incident.” Mom turned her attention back to me. “What’s your favorite class so far?”

“Yours, of course.” I gave her a look, asking if she really thought I was silly enough to answer any other way, and she laughed.

“Besides mine.” Mom put her chin in her hand, ignoring the entire elbows-on-the-table rule. “English, maybe? You’ve always loved that most.”

“Not with Mrs. Bethany.”

This didn’t earn me any sympathy. “Listen to her.” Dad was stern, and he set his glass down on the old oak table too hard, with a thunk. “She’s someone that you need to take seriously.”

I thought: Stupid, she’s their boss. What would happen if word got around that their kid was bad-mouthing the headmistress? Think about somebody beside yourself for a change.

“I’ll try harder,” I promised.

“I know you will.” Mom covered my hand with her own.

On Monday, I went into English class determined to make a fresh start. We had recently started mythology and folklore, both subjects I’d always enjoyed. Surely if I could prove myself to Mrs. Bethany in any area, it would be that.

Well, apparently I couldn’t prove myself to Mrs. Bethany.

“I expect that relatively few of you will have read our next assignment,” she said, as a stack of paperbacks made its way around the room. Mrs. Bethany always smelled slightly of lavender—feminine, yet sharp. “However, I imagine that virtually all of you have heard of it.”

The paperbacks reached my desk, and I took a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. From the next row of desks, I heard Raquel mutter, “Vampires?”

As soon as she’d said it, a weird sort of electricity seemed to crackle through the room. Mrs. Bethany pounced. “Do you have a problem with the assignment, Miss Vargas?”

Her eyes glittered as she fixed her birdlike gaze on Raquel, who looked like she would have gladly bitten off her tongue to have kept from saying anything. Already her one uniform sweater had begun to pill and look worn around the elbows. “No, ma’am.”

“It sounded as though you did. Please, Miss Vargas, enlighten us.” Mrs. Bethany folded her arms in front of her chest, amused by whatever joke she was playing. Her fingernails were thick and strangely grooved. “If Norse sagas about giant monsters strike you as worthy of your notice, why not novels about vampires?”

Whatever Raquel said would be wrong. She’d try to answer, and Mrs. Bethany would shoot her down no matter what, and we could go on like that for most of the class. That was the way Mrs. Bethany had amused herself during every class period so far, finding someone to torment, usually for the amusement of the students whose powerful families she obviously preferred. The smart thing to do would’ve been for me to shut up and let Raquel be Mrs. Bethany’s whipping boy for the day, but I couldn’t stand watching it.

Tentatively, I raised my hand. Mrs. Bethany barely glanced at me. “Yes, Miss Olivier?”

“Dracula’s not a very good book, though, is it?” Everyone stared at me, shocked that somebody else had contradicted Mrs. Bethany. “It has such flowery language, and all those letters within letters.”

“I see that someone disapproves of the epistolary form that so many distinguished authors employed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” The click-click of Mrs. Bethany’s shoes on the tile floor seemed unnaturally loud as she walked toward me, Raquel forgotten. The scent of lavender grew stronger. “Do you find it antiquated? Out of date?”

Why did I ever raise my hand? “It just isn’t a very fast-moving book. That’s all.”

“Speed is, of course, the standard by which all literature is to be judged.” A few snickers around the room made me squirm in my seat. “Perhaps you want your classmates to wonder why anyone would ever study this?”

“We’re studying folklore,” Courtney interjected. She wasn’t rescuing me, just showing off. I wondered if that was to put me down or get Balthazar to look at her. For days she’d been making sure her kilt showed off her legs to their best advantage every time she sat down, but so far he seemed unmoved. “One common element in folklore around the world is the vampire.”

Mrs. Bethany simply nodded at Courtney. “In modern Western culture no vampire myth is more famous than that of Dracula. Where better to begin?”