Big Vamp on Campus - Molly Harper Page 0,9

in a big way. The witch’s spell hadn’t been as effective as she’d claimed it would be, not that they ever were. Nikolai had developed moon-calf eyes for Gigi—of course—and they had gotten embroiled in some torrid vampire romance the likes of which would make Stephenie Meyer gag. Gigi had ended up being stalked and poisoned by some mouth-breather I’d hired in her department. Gigi had died as a result of the mouth-breather’s poison, and Nikolai had turned her. Jane had pulled one of her annoying yet successful mind games that tricked me into confessing to my part in Gigi’s troubles. Then she and Nikolai had focused his considerable investigative powers on odd payments moving through the Council’s accounting offices. Trying to harm Gigi was a smudge on my record, but using Council funds to do it had gotten me dismissed from my seat of power and replaced. Replaced by Jane Jameson-Nightengale.

If I believed in such foolish notions, I might think that karma had served me a rather significant bitch-slap to the face. Jamie and I had many, many discussions about why this sort of behavior was inappropriate. He was mine, and I was his. But I’d underestimated his heart. I’d forgotten how easily he shared it with people. He wasn’t perfect. He was a man like any other, silly and petty and occasionally prone to overindulgence in video game nights, but even those tendencies were blunted by his absolute unwillingness to hurt people. And my lack of faith cut him deeply.

I was sorry, not so much because Gigi was hurt—because, as usual, she came out of the situation much beloved and smelling like the proverbial rose—but because I’d almost lost Jamie over my stupidity. He’d actually set boundaries with me. He’d insisted that I follow Jane’s ridiculous “sentence” to show that I regretted my actions. He made me apologize.

I supposed I should have thanked Jane for suggesting to the Council that I would benefit from postsecondary education. Whether she meant to or not, she’d given me an opportunity to spend unlimited time with Jamie, time I would never have had with him if I’d continued working for the Council.

But still, I was unsettled. Even with Jamie’s assurances, even with the valuable life lesson stomped into my face by Jane’s age-inappropriate purple Converse sneakers, I still wasn’t sure that Jamie and I were going to make it. And I knew it was my fault. I’d put a lot of unnecessary stress on the relationship. Yes, we were bloodmates, but I’d seen those relationships fall apart just like any other marriage could. It was supposed to be a lifetime commitment, but it was breakable, generally leaving the dumpee miserable throughout eternity. Also lonely, because other vampires tended to choose the dumper in the break-up. The dumper whined less at parties.

I groaned, running my hands through my hair until I yanked at the ends. These were not helpful thoughts. These thoughts would not calm me down to a state in which I could deal with my roommate in a way that wouldn’t leave her bruised all over again. I didn’t feel like going to the library and being with the humans who thought they were whispering. I didn’t want to go to the campus coffeehouse, because it was open-mic night, and the smell of that much desperation was dangerous to my delicate nasal passages. I couldn’t go back to my room, where Brianna was likely holding court with the harpy human enablers who flocked around her like a cloud of particularly dim fireflies. For someone who claimed to be a loner, she seemed awfully codependent on the wenches from the fourth floor. It wasn’t that I was afraid of Brianna’s gaggle. I just didn’t want to get called right back into Tina’s office.

I was debating whether my superhuman speed would be super enough for me to get in and out of my room unnoticed when I walked onto my floor and found Sidney standing outside my door. He was holding my laptop bag and wearing a knowing smile on his bearded face.

“You’re a peach, Sidney.”

He bobbed his pale, bald head. “I just couldn’t imagine her surviving a second round, champ.”

“If not for Tina, she wouldn’t have survived the first.” It surprised even me that I could exert the energy to joke with him, given my mood. But Sidney was, indeed, a big, fuzzy sweetheart of a man, and he had proven his usefulness. “If anyone asks, you didn’t see me. You don’t