“It’s a big job,” Meredith said. It wasn’t possible, was it?
But Samantha was such a good fighter, and what she was saying … why would she think she was responsible for stopping the kil er? “What makes you think you can do it?” she asked.
“I know this is difficult to believe, and I shouldn’t even be tel ing you, but I need your help.” Samantha was looking straight into her eyes, practical y vibrating with earnestness.
“I’m a hunter. I was raised to… I have a sacred trust. Al my family for generations, we’ve fought against evil. I’m the last of us. My parents were kil ed when I was thirteen.” Meredith gasped, shocked, but Samantha shook her head fiercely, pushing Meredith’s sympathy away. “They hadn’t finished training me,” she continued, “and I need you to help me get better, get faster. I’m not strong enough yet.” Meredith stared at her.
“Please, Meredith,” Samantha said. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. People are depending on me.” Unable to stop herself, Meredith started to laugh.
“It’s not a joke,” Samantha said, jumping to her feet, her fists clenched. “This is… I shouldn’t have said anything.” She stalked toward the door, her back as straight as a soldier’s.
“Samantha, wait,” Meredith cal ed. Samantha whirled back toward her with a face ful of fury. Meredith took a quick breath and tried desperately to remember something she’d learned as a child but never had occasion to use.
Crooking her pinkies together, she drew up her thumbs to make a triangle, the secret sign of greeting between two hunters.
Samantha just stared at her, face perfectly blank.
Meredith wondered if she remembered the sign correctly.
Had Samantha’s family even taught it to her? Meredith knew there were other families out there, but she had never met any of them before. Her parents had left the hunter community before she was born.
Then Samantha, moving as quickly as she ever had when they’d sparred, was before her, gripping her arms.
“For real?” Samantha said. “Are you serious?” Meredith nodded, and Samantha threw her arms around her and clutched her tightly. Her heart was beating so hard that Meredith could feel it. Meredith stiffened at first
—she wasn’t the touchy-feely type, despite being best friends with wildly affectionate Bonnie for years—but then relaxed into the hug, feeling Samantha’s slim, muscular body under her arms, so like her own.
She had the strangest feeling of familiarity, as if she had been lost and had now found her true family at last.
Meredith knew she could never say any of that, and part of her felt like she was betraying Elena and Bonnie just by thinking that way, but she couldn’t help it. Samantha pul ed away, smiling and weepy, wiping at her eyes and nose.
“I’m acting stupid,” she said. “But this is the best thing that ever happened to me. Together, we can fight this.” She gave a half-hysterical sniff and gazed at Meredith with huge shining eyes. “I feel like I’ve made a new best friend,” she said.
“Yes,” Meredith said—not weeping, not laughing, cool as ever on the outside but, inside, feeling like she was breaking into happy pieces—“yes, I think you’re right.” 14
Matt hunched his shoulders miserably. He had come to the pledge meeting because he didn’t want to stay in his room alone, but now he wished he hadn’t. He’d been avoiding Elena, Meredith, and Bonnie—it wasn’t their fault, but so much violence had happened around al four of them in the past year, so much death. He’d thought it might be better being around other people, people who hadn’t seen how much darkness there was in the world, but it wasn’t.
He felt almost like he was swathed in bubble wrap, thick and cloudy. As the other pledges moved and talked, he could watch them and hear them, but he felt separated from them; everything seemed muffled and dim. He felt fragile, too, as if removing the protective layer might make him fal apart.
As he stood in the crowd of pledges, Chloe came over and stood next to him, touching his arm reassuringly with her smal , strong hand. A gap appeared in the bubble wrap, and he could real y feel her with him. He put his hand over hers and squeezed it grateful y.
The pledge meeting was in the wood-paneled underground room where they’d first met. Ethan assured them this was just one of many secret hideouts—the others were only open to ful y initiated members. Matt had discovered by now that even this pledge room had several entrances: one through an old house just outside campus, which must have been the one they brought them through that first time, one through a shed near the playing fields, and one through the basement of the library. The ground beneath the campus must be honeycombed with tunnels for so many entrances to end up in one place, he thought, and he had an unsettling picture of students walking on the sun-warmed grass while, a few inches below, endless dark tunnels opened underneath them.
Ethan was talking, and Matt knew that usual y he would have been hanging on his every word. Today, Ethan’s voice washed over Matt almost unheard, and Matt let his eyes fol ow the black-clad, masked figures of the Vitale members who paced the room behind Ethan. Dul y, he wondered about them, about how the masks disguised them wel enough that he was never sure if he recognized any of them around campus. Any of them except Ethan, that is. Matt wondered curiously what made the leader immune to such restrictions. Like the tunnels beneath the campus, the anonymity of the Vitales was slightly unsettling.
Eventual y, the meeting ended, and the pledges started to trickle out of the room. A few patted Matt on the back or murmured sympathetic words to him, and he warmed as he realized that they cared, that somehow they’d come to feel like friends through al the sil y pledge bonding activities.
“Hold up a minute, Matt?” Ethan was next to him suddenly. At Ethan’s glance, Chloe squeezed Matt’s arm again and let go.
“I’l see you later,” she murmured. Matt watched as she crossed the room and went out the door, her hair bouncing against the back of her neck.
When he looked back at Ethan, Ethan’s head was cocked to one side, his golden-brown eyes considering.
“It’s good to see you and Chloe getting so close,” Ethan declared, and Matt shrugged awkwardly.
“Yeah, wel …” he said.
“You’l find that the other Vitales are the ones who can understand you best,” Ethan said. “They’l be the ones who wil stand by you al through col ege, and for the rest of your life.” He smiled. “At least, that’s what’s happened to me.
I’ve been watching you, Matt,” he went on.
Matt tensed. Something about Ethan cut through the bubble-wrap feeling, but not in the comforting way Chloe did. Now Matt felt exposed instead of protected. The sharpness of his gaze, maybe, or the way Ethan always seemed to believe so strongly in whatever he was saying.
“Yeah?” Matt said warily.
Ethan grinned. “Don’t look so paranoid. It’s a good thing. Every Vitale pledge is special, that’s why they’re chosen, but every year there’s one who’s even more special, who’s a leader among leaders. I can see that, in this group, it’s you, Matt.”
Matt cleared his throat. “Real y?” he said, flattered, not knowing quite what to say. No one had ever cal ed him a leader before.
“I’ve got big plans for the Vitale Society this year,” Ethan said, his eyes shining. “We’re going to go down in history.
We’re going to be more powerful than we’ve ever been.
Our futures are bright.”
Matt gave a half smile and nodded. When Ethan talked, his voice warm and persuasive, those golden eyes steady on Matt’s, Matt could see it, too. The Vitales leading not just the campus but, someday, the world. Matt himself would be transformed from the ordinary guy he knew he had always been into someone confident and clear-eyed, a leader among leaders, like Ethan said. He could picture it al .