Big Vamp on Campus - Molly Harper Page 0,3

on walking to his floor’s shower room wearing nothing but the towel slung over his shoulder. And when the dorm staff tried to intervene, he claimed that he was a nudist and that trying to force him to wear clothes in his home environment was a violation of his civil rights.

“You OK?” Jamie asked, as another boy I’d barely noticed before bent to pick up the shower things I’d dropped.

“No, I am not OK,” I told him. “Brianna used my body wash and added so much water it barely qualifies as soap. So I’m going to get some duct tape, wait for her to fall asleep, and apply it to her eyebrows until she can’t make surprised expressions anymore.”

“You said the same thing when she drank your last Faux Type O.”

“And if you hadn’t kept me from going to the hardware store, I would have pulled it off,” I grumbled. “Literally. I would have pulled off her eyebrows. And kept them as trophies.”

“Yes, and it would have been amazing, but hey, look who I ran into,” he said in that oh-so-subtle manner he had when changing subjects. He slung an arm around a tall human boy with sandy hair and bright green eyes. He was smart enough to take a step away from me when I gave him a halfhearted smile.

I liked him already.

I recalled his face from somewhere but clearly hadn’t cared enough when we met to commit his name to memory. This was a common problem when you’d lived for a few hundred years. And people got so offended when you didn’t remember meeting them at some lame party two centuries before that I’d perfected the art of pretending to know who the person was but being too aloof too refer to him or her by name.

But Jamie knew about this trick, like he knew about and/or blithely ignored most of my tricks. So he rolled his eyes a bit and nudged me. “Ben Overby, remember? Gigi’s ex.”

Right, Gigi Scanlon. The reason I was sequestered in this educational exile in the first place.

“Oh.” I tried not to make a disdainful face at the cute little human. He couldn’t help his horrible taste in women. “Lovely to see you again, Ben.”

“Nice to see you, too,” he said, with a cautious little smile. What was it about Half-Moon Hollow that fostered such “aw, shucks” harmless charm in its young men? There must be some affable Y chromosome in that very shallow gene pool. Ben had the same sort of sincerity as Jamie, highlighted by a healthy pink flush to his cheeks. Was he so intimidated by me that he was blushing? Or did he not appreciate my adorable but oblivious beau’s reference to him as “Gigi’s ex”?

One reason I could enjoy . . . and the other I could enjoy and use to my advantage. I smiled sweetly, and Ben relaxed his shoulders ever so slightly.

“I ran into Ben in the laundry room at my building. Turns out he lives two floors down from me. We thought we’d stop in and see you, and give you this book, before we head over to the gym to meet the guys.”

As Jamie handed me a textbook from our shared biology class, I tried not to let my irritation show. He had been spending a lot of time with “the guys” lately, a group of equally genial but somewhat oblivious humans and vampires living in his apartment building. They hung out at Jamie’s apartment, watching sports and talking about sports and going online to play fantasy versions of sports. All sports. All the time. I tried not to begrudge Jamie these friendships, even if they did take up most of his nights since the semester started. After all, he’d lost contact with so many of his high school friends after he was turned into a vampire. And being sequestered at Jane’s house during his first year or so with fangs, he’d only had middle-aged vampires for company. He was making up for lost time, trying to adjust to this new college experience that human children found intimidating enough even without vampire-related issues.

I was trying to be understanding about the situation. But honestly, so much sports.

Also, I didn’t really need the reminder that Jamie was allowed to live in a nice, vampire-friendly, off-campus apartment. Yet another step on Jane’s part to keep her childe separated from me.

“Jamie, sweetheart, you do remember that we don’t need to go to the gym, yes? Our bodies never