Eternal Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page B

breeze.
    Whoever he was, this vampire was gone.
    ‘Must be on cross-country,’ Tony said. He stepped next to me.
    ‘Did you recognize that –’ I chose my word very carefully – ‘guy?’ I asked Tony.
    ‘No. He was fast though. What were you guys talking about?’ He plucked a tomato and rubbed it on his shirt like an apple. He took a bite and wiped the juice from his cheek with the
back of his hand.
    ‘He didn’t say anything to me. He was so strange.’
    ‘Forget about him – there’s chilli for lunch, and the first of the year is always the best.’
    As Tony and I walked, Suleen’s last words came back to me:
There is a revolution. Walk into the sunrise and go back
. I glanced back at the spot where the vampire had stood. Was it
possible the revolution Suleen had mentioned was a
vampire
revolution?
    ‘You’re awfully quiet,’ Tony said as he opened the door to the union.
    ‘First-day jitters,’ I lied. I wished Vicken were here.
    Vicken
. The thought of him nearly made me stop walking but I didn’t want to draw any more unnecessary attention to myself in front of Tony. Vicken was my Scottish friend. Vicken
had once been a member of my coven. The Aeris had changed that fate and he was able to live out his life in the 1840s as he was meant to, without his soul falling into the world of vampires. I
hoped he died an old man. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
    I would honour Vicken the moment I had the chance. I would do an old vampire ritual, one of respect.
Oh, it’s just an arrow
, he would have said. But it wasn’t
just
an arrow. I’d nearly been hit!
    Rhode had pushed me out of the way! This meant that he had been watching me. He might not have recognized me until he got close, but maybe Rhode had been intrigued by me. Perhaps he thought I
seemed familiar. I couldn’t afford to get swept away by my feelings about Rhode.
    I hadn’t even been back on campus twelve hours and already someone had shot an arrow at me and a vampire I didn’t recognize had told me to arm myself. Great.
    We entered the union and I was overwhelmed again by how familiar it was. But I was more overjoyed by the
food.
Oh my. Pizza. Chinese food. Soup. Salads.
Soda
.
    ‘Lenah! Tony!’ Tracy called to us from across the union. She waved and once we had picked out something to eat, Tony and I crossed the union to her table. As we approached, I gripped
my tray. There they were, Claudia and Kate –
alive
. Sun had bronzed their skin and the summer had lightened Claudia’s hair with almost white streaks.
    No one had been murdered. No gruesome death. Claudia and Kate scooted apart to make room for me.
    I scanned the seats for Rhode, hoping he’d be eating in the union like a normal Wickham student. I didn’t see him anywhere, though there were dozens of crowded tables.
    Tony sat down across from me and shovelled in turkey chilli so fast that it rolled down his chin. He ran the tortilla chip along his skin to scoop up the remnants.
    ‘That’s disgusting,’ Claudia said with a laugh.
    ‘What?’ he asked with a shrug.
    My love for Tony swelled.
    ‘So this is Claudia, and Kate. And I can see you met our really classy friend, Tony,’ Tracy said.
    ‘That must be really good chilli,’ I joked.
    ‘It is,’ Tony said and more spilled out of his mouth.
    ‘Ooh, I love your accent. We have a British guy here,’ Kate said.
    ‘The infamous Rhode,’ Tracy said with a roll of her eyes.
    ‘So,’ I asked Tracy, ‘did you get in?’
    ‘Of course she did,’ Claudia said. ‘Senior project she’ll be singing for the whole upper school.’
    I was about to ask what senior project was when a girl passed outside the window. As she did so, she threw a sidelong glance at me. My breath caught. She had blonde cascading ringlets, just like
Odette.
No. Odette is dead. That life never happened. It was reversed.
The light reflected off something silver around her neck. A necklace! Perhaps it was the same as the one the