And then I really couldn’t gloat anymore because the kiss went dark and deep and I couldn’t think at all. I felt the kiss everywhere—on my lips, in my belly, even in my toes. I tingled. I ached. There was nothing but his mouth and his hands. Suddenly the night felt infinitely more dangerous and infinitely more beautiful. It was all shooting stars and moonlight.

And then he pulled away and I had to struggle to find my breath again.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice a little rough.

“Huh?”

“Ready to go inside?” he explained, one corner of his mouth lifting up. It was surprisingly distracting.

“Inside?” I repeated dumbly.

“Movie night, remember?”

I swallowed. My knees felt weaker than they had after four laps around the evil jogging track at the Helios-Ra campus. “Right.”

“Lucy?”

“Yeah?”

“Your house is this way.” His pale eyes laughed at me.

I’d been heading for the garage door.

I shoved him, laughing. “Oh, shut up.”

Chapter 2

Christabel

Lucy and her boyfriend were laughing when they came into the living room, where I was reading Jane Eyre for the six hundredth time. It was my security blanket, characters I knew and loved, red bedrooms full of ghosts and the dark moors. Van Helsing was asleep on the other end of the sofa, his huge, heavy head on my foot. He’d gotten up to look out the window and sniff the front door when Lucy came home and then went right back to his favorite napping spot.

“Hey,” Lucy said. “Thanks for covering for me with the parentals.” Gandhi trailed after her, sniffing the hem of Nicholas’s pants and wagging his tail. For ferocious guard dogs, they sure had no problem with boyfriends.

“It’s barely eight o’clock at night and they’re all freaky that you’re not home yet. It’s not like you live in the ghetto.” I paused, folding the top corner of the page to keep my place. My dad used to wince every time he saw me do that, but I think books should be loved to pieces. They should be as worn and soft as flannel. “Does Violet Hill even have a ghetto?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what’s up?” Besides the fact that my mother was trying to kill me. There was no other explanation. Not only had she sent me to Violet Hill, the weirdest little backwoods town in the middle of nowhere, but she’d done it one month into my last year of high school.

In a place where everyone else had grown up together.

In a place with virtually no bookstores (at least none with more than one floor and windows not crammed with crystals and incense), one movie theater, and more vegan juice bars than coffeehouses. It just sucked.

I already missed home. I missed the anonymity of the crowded streets, libraries with rare books, and the fact that you could hop on the subway and end up anywhere.

Most of all I missed my mom.

I knew it was for the best. She needed treatment; she was getting worse and I just couldn’t take care of her anymore. When my uncle came to stay with us after his hippie van broke down, I could read it in his face. He was worried. I didn’t tell him that was the best Mom had been in weeks. After she got fired from her job at the office supply store, she lost nearly a week to a case of cheap wine. At least she drank the cheap stuff. Not that she had any choice—it wasn’t as if she could afford the expensive stuff. Anyway, she tried. She really did. But she just couldn’t seem to get better on her own. And Uncle Stuart was one of those peace-and-love family types. Before I knew it, my bags were packed and I was in the back of the patchouli wagon on the way to Violet Hill.

Lucy shrugged. “You know parents.” She had no idea. “We’re going to watch movies. Are you in?”

I shook my head, getting to my feet. “I’ll go read in my room.”

“I know for a fact that you’ve read that book a hundred times,” Lucy pointed out.

I read a lot. I love books. If they came in a bottle, I’d be a drunk too. I’d bloat myself on the wine of Wordsworth, the gin of Charles Dickens, the licorice liqueur of Edgar Allan Poe.

I bet you can already guess I don’t have a boyfriend. But to quote Pride and Prejudice for a moment: “Adieu to spleen and disappointment! What are men to rocks and mountains?”

Besides, guys are scared of me. Oh, I catch them looking sometimes. I have long, curly reddish-blond hair, and for some reason it mesmerizes them. I may as well be wearing a bikini. But then they see the ripped jeans, the combat boots, and the Edgar Allan Poe poem I’m reading (because I love it and not because it’s homework), and all of a sudden all the long blond hair in the world just isn’t enough.

Of course, Simon, my best friend back home, says it’s got nothing to do with any of that. He claims it’s because I stare at guys as if they’re stupid. Can I help it? Am I supposed to giggle and flirt when they say something dumb? Simon says yes. I say no.

Thus, no boyfriend.

Also, I use words like “thus.”

I can’t help it. I love old books best of all, with their wordiness and intricate descriptions of gas lamps and pickpockets. I like historical fiction and poetry too. Not those trendy vampire books though; they just get on my nerves. But Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s all right. Jane Eyre is my favorite book of all time. And I’ve been cultivating a very satisfying literary crush on the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. I love that his wife, Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, kept his heart after he died in a handkerchief on the mantel and fought with fellow poet Byron over who should get to keep it.