Big Vamp on Campus - Molly Harper Page 0,27

my vampiric gift? I didn’t like to admit it, but I had always been the slightest bit ashamed that I’d never developed a talent after I’d been turned. Hell, even Jane had a powerful talent, which she used to her advantage. If mine had something to do with electricity, it definitely made sense that I hadn’t immediately developed the gift. After all, I’d lived without electric power for the first three hundred years of my life. If manipulation of electrical energy was meant to be my gift, I would have needed to wait for technology to catch up.

The question was, why had my talent waited to show itself until now? Maybe that anxiety I’d felt fading had blocked off my abilities?

I’d always been hungry for power, after all. It sort of made sense that I could manipulate it now. I grinned at him as he said, “Well, I think we’re just going to have to repeat the experiment to be sure.”

5

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Involvement in campus activities is the best way for vampires to feel connected to their new community. Some areas to avoid: blood drives, sunrise yoga clubs, bake sales, and bird-watching societies. Not because there’s anything dangerous to vampires in bird-watching, but because other students will make fun of them.

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

The party was in full swing. I had transformed the main lounge on the second sublevel into a club that any vampire would . . . well, not be completely embarrassed to walk into. Huge (rented) leather lounges flanked a dance floor, providing enough room for everyone involved to camp out and pretend they weren’t watching everybody else. The walls had been temporarily papered over in black, giving the professionally choreographed light show somewhere to reflect. While black lights turned our clothes, smiles, and drinks a neon rainbow of colors, accent lights threw abstract blue shapes against the walls.

The DJ, a willowy blonde imported from Iceland, kept the music at a low, constant throb, fast enough to dance to but not so loud as to prevent conversation. Jamie, delightful goof that he was, hovered over her shoulder, staring at her playlist as if he could will some Flo Rida songs onto her laptop. The caterers were serving a respectable array of imported donor bloods. Nothing synthetic, nothing blended. Living students sipped meticulously crafted “mocktails,” because Tina had insisted that I wasn’t allowed to serve alcohol in a campus building.

And, as predicted, the girls flocked to the fruit bouquets and spent much of the evening wrapping their lips around melon balls in a provocative fashion.

“You did all this with the budget we gave you?” Tina asked me, her eyes wide behind her thick glasses.

“Some services were donated,” I admitted. I rolled my ankles, one after the other, still adjusting to the new high-heeled sandals I’d bought online. I’d gone “coed casual,” on the advice of Keagan and Meagan—dark skinny jeans and black halter top, with a charming beaded chain that stretched across my back, tinkling against my pale skin. Apparently, the black cocktail dress I had picked out was “cute but too intimidating” and would make it more difficult for my floormates to figure out that I was not, in Morgan’s words, “a psycho bitch as advertised.”

“And Galadriel helped?”

I jerked my head toward my wayward roommate, who was wearing a full-length black lace Stevie Nicks ensemble, claiming half of the credit while her human flunkies hovered around her, tittering moths flinging themselves at a dim bulb.

“She was very helpful in winnowing away ideas that didn’t work,” I offered carefully.

Tina frowned, creating tiny lines around her thin lips. “You do know that she’s filed to move to a different room next semester, right?”

It took all of my skill to school my features into a surprised pout. “No! Oh, and just when we were starting to get along.”

Tina’s frown deepened as she tried to suss out whether I was lying. Honestly, I’d found out about Brianna’s transfer days before, thanks to Morgan, who worked part-time in the student-housing office. Morgan, without any prompting from me, had managed to assign Brianna to room with Tricia, a vampire who spent much of her time having screaming arguments on her cell phone with her boyfriend, whether she was in her room, the hallway, the elevator, or the bathroom. This assignment would also place Brianna in the room next door to Alannah, who was prone to loud animalistic sex noises on nights