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that we’re finally doing something important. Vampires have screwed up both our lives, and ghosts—I’m not even going there. Now we can strike back. That’s worth the sacrifice.”
    I knew I didn’t dare trust Raquel with the truth, but I wanted her to understand a little of what I was really feeling. In a small voice, I said, “My parents took good care of me.”
    Raquel said nothing. I’d caught her off guard, and I could tell she didn’t know what to think.
    “And Balthazar—he was kind to me. To both of us.” I thought that might help convince her.
    Instead, she sat up straight, energized by anger so immediate that it shocked me. “Listen, Bianca. I won’t pretend to understand what you’ve been through. I thought I’d had it rough, but finding out the people you thought were your parents were really vampires—that’s the worst.”
    I had to let her go on believing that, so I remained silent.
    She continued, “They kind of brainwashed you, okay? You’re going to keep making excuses for them for a long time. But the fact is, they screwed you over. Balthazar played their mind games right along with the rest of them. So wake up. Get your head straight. We aren’t kids anymore. We discovered that there’s a war on, and our place is here with the soldiers.”
    Raquel was so absolute. So sure. I could only nod mutely.
    “Okay,” she said. When she burrowed under her blanket, I figured our conversation was over for the night. It’s not like there was anything else I could share with her anyway. Then, very softly, she added, “I’ll make us a collage sometime soon.”
    I smiled and hugged my pillow. “Something pretty. This place could use some pretty.”
    “I was thinking more fearsome and wicked,” she said. “We’ll see.”
     
    During the next couple of weeks, every day seemed to be exactly like the one before it and the next to come.
    Lights came on at some crazy early hour of the morning. I didn’t know what time it was exactly, because we didn’t have clocks or cell phones. But I could tell from the way my whole body protested that it was too early for me.
    Everybody got ready superfast. Basically, I hardly had time to do more than rinse myself off in the showers. And these were communal showers, too—like my worst gym class nightmare—but everybody was so businesslike and quick that I didn’t have much chance to feel self-conscious. Then we changed into our workout clothes and headed to their makeshift exercise area.
    And stayed there. For hours.
    Not everybody had to stay put, of course. The Black Cross people from New York, whose names were hardly more than a blur ( ZackElenaReneeHawkinsAnjuliNathan ), trained in the mornings, then set out on patrols after the night shift came in. They had maps of New York City up in the patrol area, with different routes marked out. Somebody was watching virtuallyevery neighborhood of the city day and night. I knew that Lucas, Dana, and the others from our group were sometimes on those patrols, but not me and Raquel. No, we were expected to become fighters or die trying.
    Me, I might’ve been happy to die trying. Dying seemed easier than trying to do a chin-up, much less five of them like they wanted.
    “Come on, Olivier.” My trainer for the day, a red-haired woman named Colleen, held my feet as I struggled through my sit-ups. “Go for sixty.”
    “Sixty?” My face was flushed, and I felt like I might vomit at any second. I’d just done forty. “I can’t.”
    “You can’t until you can. Push for it.”
    Sure enough, within a couple weeks, I could do sixty, though the last ten felt like raging hot death. Sadly I was still way short of having six-pack abs, which I felt like I was entitled to.
    Other times, we were on the climbing wall, which was scary as hell—no, it wasn’t a cliff, but you could fall five or six feet, and that would definitely hurt. Or we ran—not laps, because there wasn’t a track—but up and down the long path