him off guard. He stepped past me and came into the room, looking between the three of us.
"Male and female students aren't supposed to be in each other's rooms."
I knew pointing out that Adrian wasn't technically a student wasn't going to get us out of trouble here. We weren't supposed to be in any guy's room.
"How do you keep doing this?" I asked Adrian, frustrated.
"Do what?"
"Keep making us look bad!"
He chuckled. "You guys are the ones who came here."
"You shouldn't have let them in," scolded Dimitri. "I'm sure you know the rules at St. Vladimir's."
Adrian shrugged. "Yeah, but I don't have to follow any school's stupid rules."
"Perhaps not," said Dimitri coldly. "But I would have thought you'd still respect those rules."
Adrian rolled his eyes. "I'm kind of surprised to find you lecturing about underage girls."
I saw the anger kindle in Dimitri's eyes, and for a moment, I thought I might have seen the loss of control I'd teased him about. But he stayed composed, and only his clenched fists showed how angry he was.
"Besides," continued Adrian, "nothing sordid was going on. We were just hanging out."
"If you want to 'hang out' with young girls, do it at one of the public areas."
I didn't really like Dimitri calling us 'young girls,' and I kind of felt like he was overreacting here. I also suspected part of his reaction had to do with the fact that I was here.
Adrian laughed just then, a weird kind of laugh that made my skin crawl. "Young girls? Young girls? Sure. Young and old at the same time. They've barely seen anything in life, yet they've already seen too much. One's marked with life, and one's marked with death...but they're the ones you're worried about? Worry about yourself, dhampir. Worry about you, and worry about me. We're the ones who are young."
The rest of us just sort of stared. I don't think anyone had expected Adrian to suddenly take an abrupt trip to Crazyville.
Adrian was calm and looked perfectly normal again. He turned away and strolled toward the window, glancing casually back at the rest of us as he pulled out his cigarettes.
"You ladies should probably go. He's right. I am a bad influence."
I exchanged looks with Lissa. Hurriedly, we both left and followed Dimitri down the hall toward the lobby.
"That was...strange," I said a couple of minutes later. It was stating the obvious, but, well, someone had to.
"Very," said Dimitri. He didn't sound angry so much as puzzled.
When we reached the lobby, I started to follow Lissa back toward our room, but Dimitri called to me.
"Rose," he said. "Can I talk to you?"
I felt a sympathetic rush of feeling from Lissa. I turned toward Dimitri and stepped off to the side of the room, out of the way of those passing through. A party of Moroi in diamonds and fur swept past us, anxious looks on their faces. Bellhops followed with luggage. People were still leaving in search of safer places. The Strigoi paranoia was far from over.
Dimitri's voice snapped my attention back to him. "That's Adrian Ivashkov." He said the name the same way everyone else did.
"Yeah, I know."
"This is the second time I've seen you with him."
"Yeah," I replied glibly. "We hang out sometimes."
Dimitri arched an eyebrow, then jerked his head back toward where we'd come from. "You hang out in his room a lot?"
Several retorts popped into my head, and then a golden one took precedence. "What happens between him and me is none of your business." I managed a tone very similar to the one he'd used on me when making a similar comment about him and Tasha.
"Actually, as long as you're at the Academy, what you do is my business."
"Not my personal life. You don't have any say in that."
"You're not an adult yet."
"I'm close enough. Besides, it's not like I'll magically become an adult on my eighteenth birthday."
"Clearly," he said.
I blushed. "That's not what I meant. I meant- "
"I know what you meant. And the technicalities don't matter right now. You're an Academy student. I'm your instructor. It's my job to help you and to keep you safe. Being in the bedroom of someone like him ... well, that's not safe."
"I can handle Adrian Ivashkov," I muttered. "He's weird- really weird, apparently- but harmless."
I secretly wondered if Dimitri's problem might be that he was jealous. He hadn't pulled Lissa aside to yell at her. The thought made me slightly happy, but then I remembered my earlier curiosity about