“Hey.” She gives me a wan, hopeful smile. “Um, sorry if you were still asleep, but we’re all going to breakfast, and I was hoping you’d come too?”
She seems more resigned to all of this than she did yesterday, but somehow less sure of herself. I give her as reassuring a smile as I can manage.
“Sure,” I tell her. “Just need a minute.”
When I’m finished with enough morning functions to make me feel halfway human, I find her in the hallway with her back pressed against the wall and her arms tucked up to her chest, her fingers linked behind her head as if she’s shielding her breasts and her neck. She straightens up when she sees me, though, and smiles.
“Winona said she’d save seats for us,” she says. “She’s really pleased about last night, I think. She’s in a really good mood. Things must’ve gone well for her.”
I have no response to that, so I don’t try to come up with anything. Jessica and I walk to the dining hall in comfortable silence. I like that she doesn’t feel the need to fill moments of quiet with pointless words.
Honestly, she seems like the kind of person I would have liked to be friends with on the outside. Not that I ever let anybody get that close—friends are nothing more than liabilities in my line of work—but if I allowed myself to have friends, she would make a good one.
The undead must be late risers. The great hall is mostly empty of vampires at this hour, but there are quite a few tributes already sitting at the tables when we enter. The whole vibe is much different than it was last night, the atmosphere more relaxed.
Most of my fellow newbies seem to have adjusted to the flipped schedule pretty easily—I guess it’s not so hard to do when you never see the sun—and are already chattering on animatedly over their breakfasts. A cluster of giggles makes my head hurt. Of course it’s coming from the table Jessica is leading me toward. I slide into my seat and the dark-haired girl sits down beside me. She seems to scoot her chair closer to mine as she moves it in toward the table, but maybe that’s just in my head.
Does she think I can protect her somehow? Or is she especially scared of someone here? What’s going on with her?
“You’re just in time.” Another one of the tributes whose name I’m pretty sure is Gretchen grins at us. Then she leans forward, keeping her voice low. “We were just rating some of the vampires, picking the ones we’re most interested in. Status is easy, because it’s already built in to the system. I mean, obviously Bastian is the top dog around here, but anybody at the high table would be a good match. So now we’re moving on to pure looks. Who do you think is the best looking of the bunch?”
“Connor,” Chelsea murmurs dreamily, then licks yogurt off her spoon. “He’s so cute and so fit, and he’s got that whole funny guy thing going on.”
“Nah. He’s too much of a pretty boy for my tastes,” Elise puts in, surprising me. I didn’t think she’d have an opinion about any of this, or admit to one anyway. She points with her spoon across the hall. “Rome.”
I follow where she’s pointing, and my heart leaps up into my throat. The broad-shouldered punk bouncer looking vamp is standing against the wall, sweeping a brutal glare across everyone in attendance for breakfast this “morning.”
“Oh, he is a hottie.” Winona purses her lips, glancing around the table with a smug look. “But I heard he was in trouble with the Elders. You know, the vampire court that sits up at the high table with the prince.”
Gretchen nods. “Yup. Just got back from banishment. Supposedly his punishment is over, but you know how it goes. Ex-cons always gonna be ex-cons to some people.”
“What did he do to the Elders?” Another girl—Demi, I think—asks.
Gretchen shrugs, stealing another glance at Rome. “Who knows? Nobody’ll talk about it, at least not to tributes. All I know is, the Elders still hold a grudge against him, and he’s always got that scowl on his face—unless he’s feeding.” She waggles her eyebrows smugly.
Demi gasps. “Oh my god, did he feed on you last night?” she asks in a whisper.
Gretchen grins. “A lady never kisses and tells.” She waits a beat, just long enough for Demi’s face to fall in disappointment, then adds, “But I’m not a lady. Hell yeah, he fed on me. It was hot as hell too. God, I love the way he does it. Trust me, girls, you’ll find your favorites.”
Jessica is pushing her food around her plate, not eating any of it. That worries me, but the direction this conversation is going worries me more.
“Sure, he’s good looking enough,” Winona says dismissively. “But honestly, the bad boy type never gets anywhere in life. Neither do goody-two-shoes like Connor. He’s sweet and all, but the other vampires will walk all over him for all eternity. Now, Bastian—”
“We know, we know, he has all the power,” Chelsea says, rolling her eyes.
Winona purses her lips. “What I was going to say is that if you’re looking for the hottest man in the room whose attractiveness isn’t dampened by a personality handicap, Bastian wins, hands down.”
“Guess that depends on what you mean by a personality handicap,” a girl I haven’t met yet says. “I think refusing to bond is a pretty big handicap. Why fantasize about someone you can never have?”
“That’s your problem, Ji-yoo,” Winona shoots back. “You see ‘impossible’ as a fact. I, however, see it as a challenge. You can bet your ass that when the bonding ceremony rolls around, I’ll be the one lying across Bastian’s lap. You’ll be lucky if a vampire busboy chooses to bond with you.”
Ji-yoo pretends to cuss her out in Korean. I’ve picked up just
