Shadow Kiss Page 0,40

the box I held. "We're in the middle school dorm. The younger kids are next door."

"Yes, but Ms. Davis lives in this building. Let me try to find her and see where she wants these." He set his box down carefully. "I'll be right back."

I watched him go and set my own box down. Leaning against a wall, I glanced around and nearly jumped when I saw a Moroi girl only a couple feet away. She'd been standing so perfectly still, I hadn't noticed her. She looked like she could be mid-teens - thirteen or fourteen - but she was tall, much taller than me. The slimness of her Moroi build made her look even taller. Her hair was a cloud of brown curls, and she had freckles - rare among the normally pale Moroi - across her face. Her eyes widened when she saw me looking at her.

"Oh. My. God. You're Rose Hathaway, aren't you?"

"Yeah," I said with surprise. "Do you know me?"

"Everyone knows you. I mean, everyone heard about you. You're the one who ran away. And then you came back and killed those Strigoi. That is so cool. Did you get molnija marks?" Her words came out in one long string. She hardly took a breath.

"Yeah. I have two." Thinking about the tiny tattoos on the back of my neck made my skin itch.

Her pale green eyes - if possible - grew wider. "Oh my God. Wow."

I usually grew irate when people made a big deal about the molnija marks. After all, the circumstances had not been cool. But this girl was young, and there was something appealing about her.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Jillian - Jill. I mean, just Jill. Not both. Jillian's my full name. Jill's what everyone calls me."

"Right," I said, hiding a smile. "I figured it out."

"I heard Moroi used magic on that trip to fight. Is that true? I would love to do that. I wish someone would teach me. I use air. Do you think I could fight Strigoi with that? Everyone says I'm crazy." For centuries, Moroi using magic to fight had been viewed as a sin. Everyone believed it should be used peacefully. Recently, some had started to question that, particularly after Christian had proved useful in the Spokane escape.

"I don't know," I said. "You should talk to Christian Ozera."

She gaped. "Would he talk to me?"

"If you bring up fighting the establishment, yeah, he'll talk to you."

"Okay, cool. Was that Guardian Belikov?" she asked, switching subjects abruptly.

"Yeah."

I swore I thought she might faint then and there. "Really? He's even cuter than I heard. He's your teacher, right? Like, your own personal teacher?"

"Yeah." I wondered where he was. Talking to Jill was exhausting.

"Wow. You know, you guys don't even act like teacher and student. You seem like friends. Do you hang out when you're not training?"

"Er, well, kind of. Sometimes." I remembered my earlier thoughts, about how I was one of the few people Dimitri was social with outside of his guardian duties.

"I knew it! I can't even imagine that - I'd be freaking out all the time around him. I'd never get anything done, but you're so cool about it all, kind of like, 'Yeah, I'm with this totally hot guy, but whatever, it doesn't matter.'"

I laughed in spite of myself. "I think you're giving me more credit than I deserve."

"No way. And I don't believe any of those stories, you know."

"Um, stories?"

"Yeah, about you beating up Christian Ozera."

"Thanks," I said. Now rumors of my humiliation were trickling down to the lower campus. If I walked over to the elementary dorms, some six-year-old would probably tell me she'd heard that I killed Christian.

Jill's expression turned momentarily uncertain. "But I didn't know about the other story."

"What other story?"

"About how you and Adrian Ivashkov are - "

"No," I interrupted, not wanting to hear the rest. "Whatever you heard, it's not true."

"But it was really romantic."

"Then it's definitely not true."

Her face fell, and then she perked back up a few seconds later. "Hey, can you teach me to punch someone?"

"Wai - What? Why would you want to know that?"

"Well, I figure if I'm going to fight with magic someday, I should learn to fight the regular way too."

"I'm probably not the right person to ask," I told her. "Maybe you should, um, ask your P.E. teacher."

"I did!" Her face looked distraught. "And he said no."

I couldn't help but laugh. "I was joking about asking him."

"Come on, it could help me fight a