Big Vamp on Campus - Molly Harper Page 0,12

the point where I could take her out in public without worrying about an “incident.”

“So how’s the roommate?” Georgie asked casually. “Does she still have her eyebrows?”

“Only by the grace of Jamie’s good timing,” I grumbled. “We got into a fight and destroyed a desk, so now we have to prove how sorry we are by planning a party for our dorm—oh, I’m sorry, our residence hall.”

Georgie, who’d survived cross-oceanic travel before the steam engine and the advent of polyester, shuddered. “People are still correcting you on that?”

I nodded. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s a dormitory. People have called them dormitories for hundreds of years, and suddenly they want to complicate things? Anyway, the hall director has set a budget for us. It’s an insult to shoestrings. Enough to buy a couple of two-liters of soda and some Plasma Pop.”

“And did she tell you that you had to stick to that budget?”

I lifted my brow. “No, she did not. She just told me how much the school would give me to spend.”

“I’m ashamed of you for not thinking of this on your own.”

“I’m a little ashamed of myself,” I noted, shaking my head.

“I’m sending you a care package full of the usual necessities. Bottled blood, iTunes gift cards, and some drawings I did for you. Jane says that artistic expression is a healthy way for me to communicate my feelings, without having to be so gauche as to state them outright.”

“Georgie, you made me a drawing? I don’t think you’ve done that since you were—”

“Actually seven years old, as opposed to just looking like I’m seven years old?” Georgie suggested.

“Yes. You drew me a bunny with a piece of charcoal on a scrap of old parchment.”

“Well, this time I drew you a picture of that time in Barcelona in pastel crayon.”

“That time with the circus people?” I asked.

“No, the time with the candle maker and his obnoxious mistress.”

“That was messy.”

“Yes. I wore the red crayon down to a nub,” she said brightly. “Jane was disgusted, but she appreciated my technique and attention to anatomical detail. You probably won’t want to display it in your room, because it will disturb your roommate.”

“I’ll hang it on her mirror.”

“Jane says she’s going to give me some bowls of fruit to draw next time.”

“That’s probably for the best. Do me a favor, and don’t do any works based on our time in Egypt, all right?”

Georgie sighed. “Why must you stifle my creativity?”

“I love you, Georgie.”

She puckered her lips into a distasteful little moue, the same way she had when I’d tried to force her to drink the blood of that vegan nutritionist. “College is making you soft.”

“Just say it.”

“I love you, too,” she intoned, though a little flicker of affection crossed her face.

I kissed my fingertips and waved at her. She grinned at the camera and closed the chat window.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I missed my sister, even though I knew it would be healthy for us to spend some time apart. After four hundred years together, our codependent dynamic was pretty entrenched. But part of me worried that she would like living with Jane more than with me. Or that she would thrive in some way I’d never helped her find.

I would not admit to homesickness. I was four hundred years old. That was far beyond the acceptable age range for crying about wanting to sleep in my own bed in my own house.

I leaned back in the lounge chair and wiped at the suspicious moisture on my face that was in no way related to my supposed homesickness.

Maybe hitting Brianna again would make me feel better.

3

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Remember that at some point, you will have to study. No matter how old you are, no one completely understands trigonometry.

—Big Vamp on Campus: Strategies to Successfully Integrate the Undead into Postsecondary Education

Brianna’s mess seemed to have mutated and grown over the last week. Ever since our fight, she’d basically stopped making any effort to tidy her side of the room. By comparison, her previous efforts at cleaning were Herculean. She was passive-aggressively creating her own Augean stables to get back at me for smacking her around.

It was surprisingly effective.

Even more surprising was the fact that I hadn’t seen Brianna during that week. Oh, I’d seen some of her human cronies, who sneered and stared me down in the hallways, like that would intimidate me. I didn’t know how she was doing it, but somehow she was managing to dodge me