Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,82

most delicious curiosity guiding his tongue.

COFFINS Or How Else Does One Get Beauty Rest?

Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker

You’re probably familiar with the idea that vampires sleep in coffins. At least, some vampires—like, the father of vamps, Count Dracula himself—sleep in coffins. (Others prefer spooky old mansions or low-rent, basement apartments). In some cases, the vampire must sleep in their own coffin with their own grave dirt or they’ll become weak and die. In others, it’s a means of keeping away deadly sunlight. And nothing says “Hey, I’m totally undead” quite like the sight of a vampire crawling out of a coffin! Whatever the reason, the vamps who need their trusty death box are literally stuck with it. They cannot leave it behind even if they want to! In Dhonielle’s story, she’s reimagined the coffin in the most magical way—by transforming it into an apothecary that moves to a new location every few years. Bea is both bound to her family and anxious to strike out on her own, even if she has to burn to do it.

How far would you go to gain your independence?

FIRST KILL

Victoria “V. E.” Schwab

I

[Friday]

Calliope Burns has a cloud of curls.

That’s the first thing Juliette sees.

There are so many other things, of course. There’s Calliope’s skin, which is a smooth, flawless brown, and the silver studs that trace her ears, and the mellow rumble of her laugh—a laugh that should belong to someone twice her size—and the way she rubs her left fingertip back and forth across her right forearm whenever she’s thinking.

Jules notices those, too, of course, but the first thing she sees every day in English, when she takes her seat two rows behind the other girl, are those curls. She’s spent the last month staring at them, trying to steal the occasional glimpse of the cheek, chin, smile beyond.

It started with a kind of idle curiosity.

Stewart High is a massive school, one of those places where it’s easy for change to go unnoticed. There are nearly three hundred people in their junior class, but this year, only four of them were new, introduced at the first-day assembly. Three of the transfers were boring and bland, two square-jawed jocks and a mousy boy who’s never looked up from his phone.

And then there was Calliope.

Calliope, who looked straight out at the assembled school, as if rising to some unspoken challenge. Calliope, who moves through the halls with all the steady ease of someone at home in their skin.

Juliette has never felt at home in her skin, or in any other part of herself, for that matter.

Two rows up, the dark cloud of curls shifts as the girl rolls her neck.

“Ms. Fairmont.” The teacher’s voice cuts through the room. “Eyes on your test.”

The class snickers, and Jules drops her gaze back to the paper, sluggish blood rising to her pale cheeks. But it’s hard to focus. The air in the room is stale. Her throat is dry. Someone is wearing way too much perfume, and someone else is tapping their pencil, a rhythmic metronome that grates on her nerves. Three people are chewing gum, and six are shifting in their chairs, and she can hear the shuffle of cotton against skin, the soft whoosh of breaths, the sounds of thirty students simply living.

Her stomach twists, even though she ate breakfast.

It used to be enough to get her through the day, that meal. It used to—but now her head is beginning to pound and her throat feels like it’s full of sand.

The bell finally rings, and the room plunges into a predictable chaos as everyone rushes to lunch. But Calliope takes her time. And when she gets to the door, she looks back, the gesture so casual, as if checking over her shoulder, but her gaze lands squarely on Juliette, and she feels her pulse turn over like a stubborn engine. The other girl doesn’t smile, not exactly, but the edge of her mouth almost quirks up, and Jules breaks into a full-blown grin, and then Calliope walks out and Jules wishes she could crawl under the floor and die.

She counts to ten before following her out.

The hall is a tide of bodies.

Up ahead, Calliope’s dark hair bobs away from her, and Juliette follows in her wake, swears she can smell the subtle honey of the other girl’s lotion, the vanilla of her ChapStick. Her steps are long and slow, and Juliette’s are quick, the distance between them closing a little with every stride, and Jules