Vamplayers Read Free Page A

“My lunch was absolutely fantastic, as usual.”
    Alice looks at Cara’s empty plate. “Well, anyone who shoves down their blood clots any old way hardly has a discriminating palate.”
    Cara slides a thin cornrow behind her ear and glares at Alice. “Who are you discriminating against now, Alice?”
    “W-what? Who, me? Nobody. Wait, what?”
    Cara smiles.
    I tidy my tray and watch the would-be Saviors slowly leaving the cafeteria in their tight little groups.
    They ignore us for the most part, like seniors with freshmen, lettermen with geeks, hot girls with chicks in Weight Watchers.
    I watch them saunter, laughing, big and strong, vampires through and through, off to another aikido or judo or fencing class, off to study the grand vampiric languages or the history of Transylvania, off to save lives, chew gum, and kick some bloodsucking booty.
    I frown, thinking of Dr. Haskins and her theory that the girls and I are just too comfortable being Sisters trapped in high school forever to ever be Saviors on our own.
    I can’t believe that. I refuse to believe that. I mean, everyone at the Academy wants to be a Savior. That’s why we’re here in the first place.
    The Saviors are, in a word, badass. When a city gets infested—when the cops, the feds, even the army can’t handle it—who do they call? The Saviors. When one, two, or three hundred screaming vampires rampage a town looking for fresh victims in the middle of the street, who do they call? The Saviors.
    Like some kind of vampire superheroes on steroids, they swoop into town wearing their red leather jumpsuits and sleek motorcycle boots, wielding their monogrammed stakes and personal-sized crossbows, cutting down vampires left and right.
    Who wouldn’t want to do that for a living, right?
    And what do we do? The Sisterhood of Dangerous Girlfriends? We get dropped into schools where officials or the occasional anonymous tipster suspect a verifiable vampire sighting. We rout him out, identify the girl he’s trying to neck with (literally), become her girlfriends, and stop an infestation before it happens.
    Bor-ing.
    And not just boring but seriously?
    High school?
    In the six years I’ve been a Sister, I have lived in nearly every state and attended over seventy high schools.
    It. Is. Terrifying.
    Imagine being trapped in high school.
    For.
    Ev. Er.
    Just … gross.
    It’s like that ancient Greek myth, the one about the guy who tricked the gods into letting him out of the underworld, then refused to go back. You know, Sisyphus, or what’s his name? And as punishment they sentenced him to roll a great big rock up a hill every day only for it to roll down just before he reached the top so that the next day he had to roll it right back up. For eternity.
    Except our ball is a great big spit wad.
    So Dr. Haskins is wrong.
    I don’t want to stay a Sister forever. Nobody does.
    I do want to be a Savior. In the worst possible way. I just haven’t gotten the hang of Simulation House ye—
    The cafeteria is silent, which means one of two things. Either Alice and Cara have left the building (because, seriously, those two never stop talking) or they have stopped talking, if only momentarily, and they’re waiting for me to answer a question so they can go back to talking as soon as I open my mouth.
    I look up and see their mouths shut, their eyes staring at me expectantly.
    We’re alone now. The cafeteria is completely and suddenly empty. “Huh? What? Why? How? When?”
    Cara smiles. “Why so down, Lily?”
    I shrug.
    Alice figures it out right away. “She had her Simulation today. It must not have gone very well, huh?” She tries to hide her pretty obvious pleasure at my misfortune, but we all know Alice loves being First Sister and hates the thought of giving up her title. As Third Sister, I’m no direct threat to her—yet.
    And that’s exactly how she likes to keep it.
    “Not really,” I grumble.
    Cara reaches across the table and pats the top of my hand.