When the bell rang to end final period Monday, I was counting all the ways I could drain Madame Bissett’s blood and make it look like an accident once I was vampire again. What kind of teacher gave two days’ notice for an exam? I had way too much going on this week to cram a bunch of conjugations into my head, only to forget them all the next day anyway.

I gave her my most evil glare on the way out the door and didn’t break eye contact until I ran smack into Poe.

“Graceful,” he said.

Then he smiled over my shoulder. “Bon après-midi, Madame Bissett!”

“Bonjour, Monsieur Dupont!” she called back.

“How do you say ‘kiss ass’?” I snarled under my breath.

Poe laughed and looped my arm through his, pulling me down the hall. “Lèche-cul, and guilty as charged. I have a message for you from the sisters Carlone. They wish for you to join them on the fifty-yard line for an impromptu committee meeting.”

“The fifty-yard line?”

“The football field. I’m here to escort you, as it is surprisingly tricky to find for such a giant plot of land.”

And it was soon obvious why. Poe dragged me past the east gym, where junior girls were subjected to the torture of physical education twice a week, and led me right through the mega gym on the school’s west end—a cavernous space with glossy floors unmarred by scuffs or scratches. This gym, it seemed, was too fancy for PE, though inexplicably, it was fine for us to allow girls in spike heels and all manner of costume glitter and glue for the dance portion of the Halloween Hoopla.

Large double doors leading out to the school’s front lawn sat open, but Poe steered me in the opposite direction, to a small side door practically hidden under the gym’s collapsible bleachers. The door was unmarked but lit from above by a simple red exit sign. It looked like the kind of door you weren’t supposed to touch because it would probably set off an alarm.

Poe pushed it open, and my eyes soared upward, taking in the sight beyond the threshold. We stepped onto a wide swath of grass between two long, high brick walls on either side, stretching at least two stories up to open blue sky and extending out from the school, like a tunnel with the top down. The walls were the same brick red as the school and seemed to go on forever, the football field only just visible at the end.

Poe must have seen the wonder on my face as I took it all in, because he launched into his tour guide mode, detailing how the fortresslike walls came to be. He explained that when the new school was built, the state-of-the-art football field was surrounded by a common chain-link fence, but that wasn’t enough to keep the riffraff out.