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banter were like an aphrodisiac to him. He winked at me before he arrogantly turned away and disappeared into the crowd of students.
    Becky appeared weary as we headed to our lockers, but I remained unperturbed.
    At the moment, celebrating our birthdays in a joint party should have been the biggest event in my life. Usual y I’d be obsessed with thoughts of decorating the mansion with bat-shaped bal oons, dark purple streamers, and a monster-size chocolate cake with tiny coffins.
    But I couldn’t think of anything else when Jagger and his friends were secluded in the vacant mil , designing its transformation into one of the most cryptic of al clubs. With Alexander’s best friend only a short distance away from the Mansion, in secret, I knew I wouldn’t be able to invite him or the others. It felt like a stake through my heart and made me miserably lonely for my boyfriend’s sake.
    The whole birthday celebration was already ripe with drama.

Chapter 4
Creeping in the Crypt
    I was dying to know more about the plans for the Crypt and Sebastian’s sudden love for Luna. I had been hoping he’d be the perfect match for either Onyx or Scarlet, but he’d fal en for Alexander’s former nemesis’s sister. Now Sebastian would be hanging out with Luna and Jagger instead of Alexander and me and even going into business with Jagger. It was al happening too fast—even for someone as impulsive as me.
    I decided I had a chance to find out more of Jagger’s intentions that afternoon since I would be protected by the sun—I used it to my advantage.
    As soon as Becky dropped me at my house after school, I hopped on my bike and pedaled toward the Sinclair Mil . The ride was exhausting, with its curving hil s and narrow, winding roads.
    The rocky gravel of the mil ’s driveway made it too unwieldy to ride over even with my thick tires, and I didn’t want to stir any sleeping vampires with the noise, so I walked my bike over the gravel and leaned it against one of the brick wal s. I found a few rusted and locked gates with boarded-up windows.
    I went around to the back of the building. This empty factory was historical to Dul svil e, and I remembered learning about it in school. The mil prospered manufacturing uniforms for the war in the 1940s. After the war ended, a linen company bought it but it eventual y went bankrupt. I imagined the noises of the running machinery cranking out uniforms for the war and the voices of the workers. The hours must have been long and laborious. I sweltered at school; I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to wear a floor-length heavy dress while sewing al day long.
    I thought it was hard to have worked at Armstrong Travel filing and making copies in a blouse, pencil skirt, and hose. I was happy I’d been born in the time of air-conditioning.
    The red-tiled smokestack, once ful of thick smoke, was now barely standing. What was once home to machines and laborers was now home to modern-day vampires.
    I found the entrance that I had watched Onyx and Scarlet pass through. The door was unstable, looking like it might come off its hinges at any moment. I held it steady and gently opened it.
    I quietly stepped over discarded materials and around garbage left by others’ sneak-ins as I made my way to the main part of the factory. So far I didn’t see any signs of the makeover I was hoping this empty mil would take on.
    Instead of neon signs adorning the wal s and a tiled dance floor, spray-painted graffiti was the only decoration, and broken chairs were cast aside in the corners like litter. I knew the vampire crew wasn’t in this room—the light was too bright for them to hide. They’d need a place dark and big enough to shelter five coffins.
    As much as Jagger had been a pain to both Alexander and me, he did make the Coffin Club in Hipstervil e a thriving place for both mortals and vampires to hang out. Jagger had a great imagination and was successful in seeing his vision come to life. And