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fought by his side.
    Lowering my voice, I explained, “So far as I know, Kieren’s okay. He, um, transferred to a fancy prep school up north.” It was what the Moraleses had decided to tell people.
    “So far as you know . . .” Mrs. Levy didn’t look satisfied, but she didn’t push it, either. Switching to teacher mode, she began making notations on her desktop calendar. “Well, you have missed a lot of school. You owe me a few papers and several journal entries.”
    I opened Frank to record my make-up work.
    “I’ll need to see an essay on ‘The Lottery,’” Mrs. Levy went on. “Oh, and one on Metamorphoses and its retellings. You flunked the quiz on ‘Young Goodman Brown,’ but given the circumstances, if you want to write a paper on it . . .”
    God, I had no time for this! Why did the Moraleses have to be so responsible? For all of Uncle D’s drawbacks, he’d hardly glanced at my report cards.
    My Chem teacher had ditched us for a conference in Houston and the sub had no clue, so class had defaulted into a study hour. Better yet, since I’d elected to do work-study in the afternoons, it was my last class of the day.
    Which brought me to Kieren’s locker. I doubted he’d left anything too personal in there, anything that screamed “werewolf,” but it seemed prudent to check.
    I waited until after the fourth-hour bell, glanced both ways, and then slammed the combination lock into the door, breaking it loose. Supernatural strength could be handy.
    Opening the door, I smelled the garlic before I saw the long rope of it dangling from the coat hanger. I pinched my nostrils closed and waved my hand to clear the air, though I honestly couldn’t tell if the scent was awful because I was a vampire or if it was awful because it had mixed with that of — I spotted Kieren’s gym bag on the shelf — overly ripe workout clothes. He must’ve forgotten to bring them home to wash.
    Shaking my head, I smiled, remembering Kieren for who he was — a real fur-and-flesh-and-bone boy — instead of for the fact that he was gone.
    Beyond that, the locker was mostly empty. There hadn’t been a need to bring a coat to school yet, and shifters ran on a hotter body temperature anyway.
    I’d return the stack of honors and AP textbooks to the office, and — thank you, Kieren — put the handwritten class notes in his English folder to good use myself.
    The folder felt bulky, and flipping it open, I noticed a thick envelope shoved into one of the divider pockets. Welcome to the University of Texas!
    It took me a minute to process. Kieren had applied to U.T., and he’d been in the first round of admitted students. Regardless of his mama’s fatalistic attitude, Kieren had been holding out hope that he’d come to manage his shift before it was time for him to leave, that his future would be here in Austin with me.
    I closed the folder, knowing I’d always treasure the letter — proof that I, not the Wolf pack, had been Kieren’s true dream.

In Sanguini’s kitchen, I poured myself a taller glass of blood wine than I’d had that morning. My body seemed better able to metabolize (or whatever) it than when I’d been human. The effects still felt slightly intoxicating — my fangs descended once. But I could concentrate.
    I retrieved Kieren’s vampire fact sheet from my backpack. I read it. I reread it. I chanted it. Sang it, proclaimed it, and eventually memorized it. Then I turned on a gas burner, lit it on fire, and dropped it to burn to ashes on the stained concrete floor.
    I had to get organized, to make checklists. It was how I’d handled everything since my parents’ fatal car accident, back in middle school.
    Maybe I hadn’t figured out the solution to Brad’s mass-infection coup. At least not yet. But I could do some basic, everyday things that needed to be done, and that would make the world seem slightly less overwhelming.
    In the manager’s office, I called to order the installation of a security