Shadow Kiss Page 0,94

compel someone at the ski lodge. "So where's the beating-people-up part come in?"

"That's the mystery," I said. Christian was summoned over to feed just then, and I put my theories on hold until I could get more info and take action. I noticed which feeder we were being led to. "Is that Alice again? How do you always get her? Do you request her?"

"No, but I think some people specifically un-request her."

Alice was happy to see us, as always. "Rose. Are you still keeping us safe?"

"I will if they'll let me," I told her.

"Don't be too hasty," she warned. "Conserve your strength. If you're too eager to fight the undead, you may find yourselves joining them. Then you'd never see us again, and we'd be very sad."

"Yes," said Christian. "I'd cry into my pillow every night."

I resisted the urge to kick him. "Well, I couldn't visit if I was Strigoi, yeah, but hopefully I'd just die a normal death. Then I could come see you as a ghost."

How sad, I thought, that I was now making jokes about the very thing that was freaking me out lately. Alice found no amusement in it whatsoever. She shook her head.

"No, you wouldn't. The wards would keep you out."

"The wards only keep Strigoi out," I reminded her gently.

A defiant look replaced her scattered one. "The wards keep anything that isn't alive out. Dead or undead."

"Now you've done it," said Christian.

"The wards don't keep ghosts out," I said. "I've seen them."

Considering Alice's own instability, I didn't mind discussing mine with her. In fact, it was kind of refreshing to talk about this stuff with someone who wouldn't judge me. Indeed, she treated this as a perfectly normal conversation. "If you've seen ghosts, then we're not safe anymore."

"I told you last time, the security's too good."

"Maybe someone made a mistake," she argued, sounding remarkably coherent. "Maybe someone missed something. Wards are made of magic. Magic is alive. Ghosts can't cross them for the same reason as Strigoi. They aren't alive. If you saw a ghost, the wards have failed." She paused. "Or you're crazy."

Christian laughed out loud. "There you go, Rose. Straight from the source." I shot him a glare. He smiled at Alice. "In Rose's defense, though, I think she's right about the wards. The school checks them all the time. The only place guarded better than here is the Royal Court, and both places are overflowing with guardians. Stop being so paranoid." He fed, and I glanced away. I should have known better than to listen to Alice. She was hardly a reputable source of information, even if she'd been around for a while. And yet... her weird logic did make sense. If wards kept Strigoi out, why not ghosts? True, Strigoi were the dead who had come back to walk the earth, but her point was sound: All of them were dead. But Christian and I were right too: The wards around the school were solid. It took a lot of power to lay wards. Not every Moroi home could have them, but places like schools and the Royal Court had theirs maintained diligently. The Royal Court...

I'd had no ghostly encounters whatsoever while we there, yet that had been incredibly stressful. If my sightings were stress-induced, wouldn't the Court and encounters with Victor and the queen have provided great opportunities for them to occur? The fact that I'd seen nothing seemed to negate the PTSD theory. I hadn't seen ghosts until we'd landed at the Martinville airport.

Which didn't have wards.

I nearly gasped. The Court had strong wards. I'd seen no ghosts. The airport, which was part of the human world, had no wards. I'd been bombarded with ghosts there. I'd also seen flashes of them on the plane - which was unwarded when we were in the air.

I looked over at Alice and Christian. They were just about finished. Could she be right? Did wards keep out ghosts? And if so, what was going on with the school? If the wards were intact, I should see nothing - just like at Court. If the wards were broken, I should be overrun - just like at the airport. Instead, the Academy was somewhere in the middle. I had sightings only occasionally. It didn't make sense.

The only thing I knew for sure was that if something was wrong with the school's wards, then I wasn't the only one in danger.

Chapter 21

Twenty-one

I COULD HARDLY WAIT for my day to end. I'd promised Lissa I'd