The phone’s battery is down to a single bar, and he didn’t give me a charger for it. When he said I’d run out of explanations, he knew it would happen soon. I haven’t even moved yet when his reply comes through: Meet me in the food court at Colgate Center after sundown. —J

It may have once been a thriving hub of local commerce, but the Colgate Center Mall has been dying for almost as long as I’ve been alive. At least a third of the shops are permanently closed, and, these days, an equal amount of the center’s fluorescent lights have been deactivated to save money. The fountain at the heart of the complex was shut off after the financial collapse and converted into a “garden” of dusty plastic bushes packed into a bed of fake dirt just beside the food court.

Unable to face the possibility of reliving another hideous death, I skip my independent art study, reaching Colgate Center well before sundown and chaining my bike to one of the racks in the parking lot. I don’t like the idea of pedaling home after dark, but I need answers, and I see no other way. I’ll come up with some explanation for my parents—obviously not the truth. Not until I know what I’m dealing with.

If I can believe anything Jude told me, it’s that if he wanted to hurt me, he’d have done it already. Choosing a public place for this meeting is a gesture meant to put me at ease … but it’s all theater, and we both know it. I’ve finally experienced mesmerism firsthand, and with one shimmer of his gorgeous brown eyes, I’d let him waltz me straight into an abattoir.

I get a mocha at the mall’s coffee shop, jumpy and unsure what to do with my hands. The barista looks nothing like Gunnar, and he screws up my order, but I have no stomach for it anyway. I’m here to meet a vampire. Before I even started day care, my parents gave me all the usual warnings about stranger danger, explaining the tricks that might be used to lure me into peril. I wasn’t to accept candy or get into a car with someone I didn’t know—and above all else, I was never, ever to go anywhere alone with someone who had fangs, even if they weren’t always visible.

So what the hell am I doing? No matter what the explanation is—whether I’ve been chosen by mystical forces to save mankind, or I’m developing psychic powers thanks to the Nexus—I’m not sure I care to hear it. What I really want is for all of this to go away.