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“Do you want me to tell you what I saw up there or not?” I asked him seriously.

Jake looked at me with raised eyebrows. His expression was a mixture of curiosity and resignation. We both knew I was going to tell him anyway.

“I saw Vater, or at least I heard him,” I said.

Jake looked at me and pushed the rest of the bacon into his mouth. He eyed me for a few seconds, probably trying to figure out if I was joking or not. “Okay,” he said finally. “You’ve got me. Spill it all.”

So I did. While we munched on that heavy, heart-stopper breakfast I filled him in on the whole story.

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“You were snoring when I got back. Louder than Chris Anderson, even. Besides, I had to think about what I was going to tell you.”

“A purge?” whispered Jake. “What does that mean? Isn’t that what adults call vomiting sometimes? I don’t like the sound of that.”

I shrugged.

“So, they are going to run us losers out of town, or kill us all and bury us in the woods, eh?” said Jake, chuckling.

I shrugged again.

Jake eyed me. “That’s not what you’re really thinking is it?”

“He wanted just our class to come here, just the youngest newest generation who are going through the change. He wants to see how strong we are.”

“So?” asked Jake. He fished a bagel out of the basket in the center of the table and slathered it with cream cheese. “Maybe he’s a Hussades fan. Maybe he’ll have us all run the course to prove who’s good and give us a medal.”

“Maybe you ought to slow down on the food if we are going to be running for our lives later today.”

He looked at me with a frown, took just one bite of the bagel then stared at it for a moment and put it down on his plate. It was perhaps the first time I’d ever seen food left on his plate.

As we were finishing up, Beth finally showed up and joined us.

“Uh-oh,” said Jake, catching sight of the big frown on her face. “More doom and gloom from your partner in crime here, eh?”

He picked up the bagel on his plate again, and seemed to be thinking about the next bite.

“I’ve been in the library. They’ve got a computer in there hooked to the Internet.”

“What’d you find out?” I asked her.

“It’s not good. Purges are never good things in history. I checked into the web browser history to see what people have been looking up on that machine. I read some disturbing things. Have you guys ever heard of Vlad the Impaler?”

Jake and I both shifted in our seats. Jake put his bagel down again.

“Oh, don’t tell me!” she said, staring.

Jake and I didn’t meet her eyes. “Don’t talk about him with the adults,” I told her.

“He’s like a relative or something, isn’t he?” she hissed. “You have got to be kidding me! I thought you said you were from Switzerland not Transylvania.”

I shushed her with my hand. “Look,” I told her, glancing around nervously. “It’s something we learn about in history class, but are told never to bring it up with others. Keep it down.”

“Oh geez,” she said, putting her face in her hands. “Okay, so at least tell me that Vater isn’t Vlad. I mean, the things I read…”

“No, no,” I said urgently. “Nothing like that. Look, don’t you have some cousins somewhere that you aren’t proud of? Someone in the distant family that is famous, but not in a good way? Someone who went to jail or something?”

“Yeah,” she answered slowly. “There’s my Uncle Bobby. I think he forged checks or something.”

“Well, it’s the same way for us. There are bad cousins in every family. We don’t associate with their sort. We might have some distant connection, but we don’t get along and haven’t for centuries.”

Her mouth hung open while she flicked her eyes back and forth between the two of us. “Let me get this straight now, you guys are talking about vampires aren’t you? Because Vlad the Impaler, a real guy in history, was thought by some to be a vampire.”

I felt like clamping my hand over her mouth. Instead I reached over and grabbed her shoulder and pulled her close and whispered in her ear. “Don’t use that word out loud, not ever. That’s not a good word around here.”

“What? Vampire?”

I winced.

“That’s a very rude word,” said Jake. “It’s like a dirty word for us.”

She looked at me with wide eyes, an open mouth and curled lips. She was very pretty even when alarmed, and she smelled good up close to me like that.

“Okay…” she said.

I felt eyes on us and turned to see Sarah two tables away. She had been watching Beth and me closely. From her point of view, it might have looked like I’d grabbed Beth and kissed her cheek. I felt a flush of red go up my face and gave Sarah a weak smile and a nod. I let go of Beth and took up another piece of bacon, even though eating was the very last thing on my mind. Sarah gave me a frosty stare in return. She tossed her head and her ponytail-like spray of hair flipped behind her head. I thought I saw a blue feather float away from her head, a sure sign she was upset.

“Okay,” said Beth finally. “Maybe that explains why there were searches about, um, Vlad on the computer.”

Neither one of us looked at her. We’d learned the history of Vlad Dracula, a lord who lived in the 1400s in Europe. He’d been an evil and terrible man.

“But you guys aren’t telling me the whole story, are you?” asked Beth, leaning close so that only the three of us could hear. “He’s related to you somehow… So that’s why you feel the moonlight. That’s why it almost burns your skin.”

I took this moment to look up at Sarah again. Sarah jerked her eyes away from me the moment I looked up, pretending she hadn’t been staring.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I put as much innocence in the question as I could.

“Because you guys are like werewolves or something.”

Jake dropped his fork.

It was all I could do to not grab Beth’s pretty little head again. I leaned close to her instead, and whispered. “The word werewolf is even more offensive to us than the word vampire.”

She nodded and gave me a tiny smile. “Okay. Makes sense, I suppose. No one likes to be reminded of distant relatives that did very bad things.”

My eyes slid back to Sarah, who was staring back, but trying not to look like she was staring back.

I realized right then that having two girlfriends was worse than having just one and probably worse than having none at all.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Game

We were finishing up breakfast when a chime went off and Urdo walked into the dining room. Everyone stopped their chatter. She hopped onto the table and walked calmly to the middle of it, her boots causing plates to slide and clatter.

“There will be an assembly to meet the lord of the house in the great hall at ten am sharp. Do not be late, children,” she said.

She hopped from the table to the floor with a single flap of her arms, which I noticed for the first time had become folded wings under her cloak. Everyone gasped, it was rare to see any adult shift in front of us.

Urdo walked out of the dining room without giving us so much as a nod. When she had gone, everyone fell to whisperings and wild speculation.

“I’ve heard he’s a bird-type too,” said one voice, I thought it was Sarah’s. “She’s showing off her wings to impress him later.”

“They’ve rounded us all up here for a reason,” said another voice. “We’re all to get awards. We’re the best crop of shifters Vater’s ever seen.”

One word kept coming up in a constant, bubbling fashion, always spoken with reverence and in a hushed tone: “ Vater. ”

Beth and I exchanged glances. Jake caught the gesture.

“What do you guys think will happen?” he asked.