Chapter 1
The nightmare never came back in order.
It came in flashes.
For a moment, I was in the back seat of a car.
I couldn’t see who was driving. I couldn’t see where we were going. Everything
beyond the windows was dark and blurred, moving too quickly for my eyes to follow.
I could feel the car beneath me. The vibration of the road. The movement as it
carried me somewhere I couldn’t remember.
Then nothing.
Another flash.
Rain against glass.
Nothing.
The car moving too fast.
Nothing.
Then I was upside down.
I didn’t remember how it happened.
One second I was sitting in the back seat, and the next my body was hanging against
the seat belt. Something hurt. There was glass somewhere. I couldn’t tell where.
Everything was wrong.
Another flash.
Darkness.
Then—
I woke up.
My eyes opened to my bedroom ceiling, and for several seconds I stayed completely
still.
My heart was pounding.
I swallowed and slowly pulled my hands from beneath the blankets. They were
trembling slightly.
It was the same nightmare.Or at least, I thought it was.
That was the frustrating part. I could never remember enough of it to be certain.
The pieces disappeared almost as quickly as they came, leaving behind nothing but the
same images I’d carried with me for years.
The back seat.
The rain.
The car.
Then being upside down.
Everything after that was gone.
I reached for my phone.
6:17 a.m.
My alarm was set for six-thirty.
I dropped my head back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. There was no
point trying to sleep for another thirteen minutes. Every time I closed my eyes after one
of these nightmares, I found myself searching for pieces that weren’t there.
I’d been told most of my life that this was normal.
Trauma affected memory. I had been young when the accident happened, and I’d
been the only survivor. What little I remembered had never been enough to identify
where I’d come from or who had been in the car with me.
Nobody had come looking for me afterward.
That part used to bother me more than the nightmare itself.
I’d spent years wondering whether I’d had parents. Siblings. A home somewhere.
Maybe there were people who had loved me and simply didn’t know where I was.
Or maybe there weren’t.
Eventually, you learned to stop building answers out of questions.
At least, most of the time.
I pushed the blankets aside and got out of bed.
By the time I’d showered and dressed for school, the nightmare had faded back to
where it usually lived: somewhere in the back of my mind.
I brushed my chocolate-brown hair, leaving it loose the way I usually did, gathered
my books and left my room.Cece was already in the kitchen.
The apartment wasn’t technically ours. It belonged to the transitional system we’d
entered after leaving the orphanage, but the three of us lived there on our own and had
for long enough that it felt like home. There were adults responsible for the building
and people around if we needed them, but for the most part, our lives belonged to us.
Cece looked up from the table. Her jet-black hair was pulled back, although a few
pieces had already escaped around her face. Against her dark olive complexion, it made
her look considerably more awake than I felt, which somehow annoyed me on principle.
She studied me for a few seconds before putting down her spoon.
“You had it again.”
I stopped. “Good morning to you too.”
“Soraya.”
There was no point pretending I didn’t know what she meant.
I reached for a mug. “Yeah.”
“The accident?”
I nodded.
Cece’s expression softened. “Bad?”
“Not really. Same as always.”
“You look tired.”
“I woke up thirteen minutes before my alarm. That’s thirteen minutes of my life I’m
never getting back.”
That earned the smallest smile from her.
“Do you remember anything new?”
I thought about it.
The rain. The movement. The sudden, impossible feeling of being upside down.
“No.”
Cece didn’t push.
That was one of the things I appreciated most about her. She could be sarcastic
enough to drive me insane, but she knew when something wasn’t funny.Alex walked into the kitchen a moment later, her dirty-blonde hair loosely pinned
back, somehow already looking put together despite the fact that it was barely
morning.
She looked at Cece, then at me.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“The nightmare,” Cece answered.
I looked at her.
“What? She was going to figure it out.”
Alex came closer. “Again?”
“Apparently my brain enjoys reruns.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
She kept looking at me.
“I’m okay,” I repeated, and this time I meant it a little more.
Alex squeezed my shoulder before turning toward the counter.
“Did you eat?”
I said nothing.
She turned back.
“Soraya.”
“I’m going to.”
“When?”
“Eventually?”
“Sit.”
Cece smiled into her breakfast.
I sighed and sat down.
There were some arguments I could win.
Arguments about breakfast with Alex were not among them.
The three of us had known each other for most of our lives. We had ended up in the
same orphanage house as children and somehow stayed together from there. Therehadn’t been some immediate, magical connection between us. We’d simply been three
girls put in the same place because none of us had anywhere else to go.
Over time, that had changed.
Cece and Alex weren’t friends in the way most people used the word.
They were my family.
Alex placed breakfast in front of me.
“Eat.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Cece laughed.
Alex gave both of us a look. “One day you’re going to appreciate me.”
“I appreciate you now.”
“Then eat.”
I picked up my fork.
Cece nodded approvingly. “She’s got you trained.”
“You’re next,” Alex said.
Cece immediately looked back at her bowl.
I smiled.
This was what I needed after the nightmare. Something ordinary.
For a little while, we talked about school, an assignment Cece had forgotten she’d
finished two days earlier, and whether Alex was actually going to attend another
athletics meeting after classes.
Then Alex looked at the time.
Her expression changed.
“We need to go.”
Cece glanced over.
“Oh.”
I followed their eyes.
“Oh.”
Within seconds, all three of us were scrambling to gather our things.
The first bell had already rung by the time we reached school.The hallways were packed with students rushing in every direction. Lockers
slammed, shoes squeaked against the floor, and voices overlapped until individual
conversations became almost impossible to distinguish.
Almost.
“Cece!”
Someone called her name from across the hallway.
She turned.
“Congratulations!”
Cece smiled and waved back. “Thank you!”
We kept walking, only for Alex to be stopped a few moments later by someone
asking about an athletics event.
People knew both of them.
Cece had earned more than a few awards in chemistry and science, while Alex
somehow managed to excel academically and still be one of the strongest students in
athletics.
I had the grades too.
I just preferred books to trophies.
I was perfectly happy disappearing into the library for hours, especially if I found
something about history. There was something satisfying about learning how the world
used to be, even if finding reliable information wasn’t always easy.
Some parts of history were documented down to the smallest detail.
Others weren’t.
“Soraya.”
I looked up.
Alex had stopped.
“What?”
She pointed ahead.
There was a staircase directly in front of me.
I looked at the book open in my hands.
Then at the stairs.
“I saw them.”Cece laughed. “No, you didn’t.”
“I was about to.”
“About to see stairs isn’t the same thing as seeing stairs.”
I closed my book. “I would’ve been fine.”
“You were going to fall.”
“I probably would’ve caught myself.”
Alex shook her head, although she was smiling.
We started down the stairs.
Halfway to the bottom, a conversation near the lockers caught my attention.
“They’re supposed to be here today.”
“Who?”
“The students from the Vampire Realm.”
I slowed slightly.
Another girl joined the conversation.
“I heard they’re guys.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. A few.”
“Are they vampires?”
The first girl shrugged. “Probably.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. They could be human.”
“Humans live there?”
“I think so.”
“Since when?”
“My sister said there are humans there.”
“Your sister also said she saw a ghost in the library.”
“She did.”
The other girl laughed.
Cece glanced toward me.“You heard about this?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Alex looked toward the group. “Students from the Vampire Realm?”
Apparently that was enough to get her attention too.
It was strange.
People didn’t come from the Vampire Realm often.
At least, not openly.
Everyone knew about the division. The Human Realm existed on one side of the
border and the Vampire Realm on the other. That was the way things had been for
generations.
At school, the rules surrounding vampires were taught much more thoroughly than
vampires themselves.
Don’t cross the border.
Don’t seek them out.
If you encounter one, keep your distance.
Don’t provoke them.
Don’t follow one anywhere.
The message was always the same.
Stay away.
What we weren’t taught was much more interesting.
What were vampires actually like? How did they live? What happened beyond the
border? How different was their world from ours?
There were books, of course.
I’d read some of them.
The problem was that half of them contradicted the other half. One author described
vampires as almost indistinguishable from humans. Another claimed they could hear a
heartbeat through a wall. Some said vampires lived among humans in their realm;
others claimed no human could survive there for long.
Nobody seemed to agree on much of anything.Even the history surrounding the separation of the realms was frustratingly vague.
We learned when it happened and that the division had been necessary to preserve
peace.
Everything else seemed to disappear behind careful language and missing pages.
Naturally, that only made me want to know more.
“Would you go there?” Cece asked.
“Where?”
“The Vampire Realm.”
I thought about it.
“To see it?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe.”
Cece looked surprised. “Really?”
“Why not?”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Because we’re repeatedly told not to?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Being curious about a place doesn’t mean I’m planning to sneak across the border.”
Cece smiled. “You’re curious about vampires.”
“I’m curious about everything.”
“That’s true.”
I looked back toward the students still discussing the visitors.
If people really were coming from the Vampire Realm, I wanted to know who they
were.
That didn’t mean I was afraid of them.
If anything, I was interested.
By the time we reached English Literature, the rumor had spread through most of
the school.
Nobody seemed to know who the visitors were or why they were coming.
That didn’t stop anyone from pretending they did.“I heard they’re staying for the rest of the year.”
“No, they’re only here for a few weeks.”
“My cousin said it’s some kind of exchange.”
“Your cousin doesn’t even go here.”
“So?”
I sat down and opened my book.
Cece dropped into the seat beside me.
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“The mystery students.”
I looked at her. “I think nobody knows anything and everyone is making things up.”
Alex sat down nearby.
“That’s probably the first accurate thing anyone has said about them.”
The bell rang before Cece could answer.
Our teacher walked to the front of the room and waited for everyone to settle down.
It took longer than usual.
“Good morning.”
A scattered chorus answered her.
She opened her book.
“Now, unless our mysterious visitors have somehow changed today’s curriculum,
we’re going to continue where we left off yesterday.”
A few people laughed.
I smiled and found the correct page.
Finally.
Something useful.
Our teacher had barely started speaking when the intercom chimed.
The room immediately went quiet.
The principal’s voice came through the speaker.
“Could Soraya please report to the principal’s office?”I looked up.
Cece slowly turned toward me.
“No.”
“What?”
Her eyes widened. “What if it’s them?”
“Why would they want me?”
“I don’t know.”
A girl behind us leaned forward.
“Maybe you’re meeting them.”
Someone else whispered, “Lucky.”
I wasn’t sure why everyone had decided that meeting three complete strangers was
some extraordinary privilege.
Our teacher gestured toward the door.
“Go ahead, Soraya.”
I reluctantly closed my book.
Of course.
I’d finally gotten everyone to stop talking about the visitors, and now I was missing
class because of them.
Assuming this even had anything to do with them.
Cece leaned closer as I stood.
“If it is them, I want details.”
“You don’t even know who they are.”
“Exactly. That’s why I need details.”
I shook my head and picked up my things.
Alex smiled. “We’ll see you later.”
I headed into the hallway.
Without everyone rushing between classes, the school felt strangely quiet.
I made my way toward the main office, trying to guess what the principal wanted.
Being class president meant there were plenty of reasons she might call me in. An
announcement, an event, some responsibility nobody else wanted.That seemed far more likely than Cece’s theory.
I reached the principal’s office and knocked.
“Come in.”
I opened the door.
“Good morning, Soraya.” The principal smiled from behind her desk. “I’m sure I
didn’t pull you away from anything too important.”
“Not really.”
That was a lie.
I liked English Literature.
“Come in. I want to introduce you to our three temporary students.”
So Cece had been right.
I stepped farther into the room.
Three chairs faced the principal’s desk, each occupied by a boy who looked around
our age.
The first had brown, loosely curled hair and glasses that gave him a slightly studious
look. He turned toward me with an easy expression, looking perfectly comfortable
despite being in an unfamiliar school.
The second had pin-straight black hair, noticeably paler skin and softer, almost
unfairly pretty features. He sat beside him, watching me with quiet curiosity.
Then I looked at the boy in the final chair.
His hair was jet black and slightly messy, falling over his forehead as though he
hadn’t bothered trying to make it behave. His complexion was warmer than the boy
beside him, and there was something more imposing about him even while he was
sitting completely still.
He looked at me.
Something inside me changed.
Not recognition.
Nothing that clear.
Just a strange, immediate awareness that made me stop a little farther from them
than I’d intended.
There was something different about these three.I couldn’t explain what.
They looked human.
Completely human.
And yet standing in the same room with them felt different from standing beside
anyone in the hallway.
Maybe it was because I knew where they’d come from.
Maybe my imagination was filling in the blanks left by everything I’d ever read.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
The principal gestured toward them.
“Soraya, this is Jonathan, Enzo and Alaric.”
The one with brown curls and glasses was Jonathan.
The pale boy with straight black hair was Enzo.
Alaric was the one who hadn’t looked away from me.
“Hi,” I said.
Jonathan smiled politely. “Hi.”
Enzo gave me a small nod.
Alaric said nothing.
I looked back at the principal.
“They’ve come to us from the Vampire Realm,” she explained. “They’ll be attending
classes here temporarily.”
That was it.
No explanation of why.
Apparently the principal didn’t know much more than the rest of us, or she wasn’t
planning to tell me.
I looked at them again.
From the Vampire Realm.
That didn’t necessarily mean they were vampires.
Humans lived there too, apparently.
At least according to the rumors.
Still, the possibility entered my mind.Jonathan looked ordinary enough.
So did Enzo.
Even Alaric, despite whatever strange feeling I’d gotten when he looked at me,
didn’t have anything obviously inhuman about him.
Maybe they were human.
Maybe they worked with vampires.
Maybe they were vampires.
I realized I was staring and quickly looked away.
“This is Soraya,” the principal continued. “She’s one of our strongest students and
our class president.”
I immediately became suspicious.
Compliments from the principal usually meant I was about to be given work.
“I thought she’d be the perfect person to show you around the school.”
There it was.
I looked at her.
Then at them.
Jonathan, Enzo and Alaric.
Three strangers from a realm I’d spent years reading about and still knew almost
nothing about.
And apparently, for the next little while, they were my responsibility.
I wasn’t sure yet whether that was a good thing.
But I had a feeling I was about to learn considerably more about the Vampire Realm
than I’d planned.
