Sign up now for Julie's Mailing List! Email Address:		Good Ghoul's Do Prologue In case you're wondering, there are at least one or two things worse than getting turned into a vampire against your will. Like, for example, turning your boyfriend into a vampire against his will. And then hiding out in the school basement while he recovers from the whole human-to-vampire transition thing. And then coming up out of the basement and having some of the gossipiest kids in school see you. And having them realize that you've been down there—in the basement, for almost twenty-four hours—with a boy! It's one thing to be a vamp. It's another thing altogether to be a vamp with a reputation as a slut. Maybe I shouldn't have cared what anyone thought. Considering what I'd been through, the rumors that Clayton and I had been doing it in the basement were tame compared to the truth—the truth being that he'd almost been killed by a vile, centuries-old vampire who also happened to be the high school's star quarterback. And since he'd only almost been killed, I finished the job. Better a slut than a murderer, right? Honestly, I wasn't sure. Neither adjective was going to look good on my college applications. But since I was undeniably still dead despite all my attempts to undead my undead-iness, I was thinking that my concern about college was a little bit misplaced. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Elizabeth Frasier, and I'm the valedictorian of Waterloo High. I'm also a vampire, and none to happy about it. Sure, the eternal youth thing has some surface allure, but the shiny façade tarnishes real fast. Think about it—sixteen forever? Carded in bars for the rest of your life? Who wants that? The culinary aspects suck, too. Literally. Because, yes, what you've heard about vamps is true. Blood. Anything else and you end up retching your guts out. Translation: No more late night McDonald's drive-bys. No more Haagen-Dazs pig-out sessions with your best friend. No more popcorn at the movies. Yes, vampirism truly is the torment of the damned. Worst of all, this whole vampire thing has completely blown my chances of getting into college, much less the film school at Tisch, the Nirvana of higher education. Not that the applications are all that specific, but I think it's a given that the admission board expects an applicant to have not only done reasonably well on her SATs, but also to attend classes in the daytime and, you know, actually be among the living. So, yes, the whole undead thing kind of pissed me off. It's not like I asked to be a vampire. They tricked me. There I was, biding my time until graduation, keeping my grade point up and spending my spare time editing the school newspaper and trying to figure out what snazzy project I could pull off for this year's science fair. A slightly nerdish existence, maybe, but it worked for me. In the midst of all that, though, Stephen Wills took a liking to me. Or so I thought. Hunky, dreamy, quarterback Stephen Wills finagled a way for me to audition for cheerleader (which is so not like me, but extracurriculars look good on a college transcript, and, hey, it was Stephen-freaking-Wills). But once I got over the raging hormones (which happened about the same time I ended up dead), I realized that Stephen wasn't interested in me. He only wanted to get close to me, turn me into a vampire, and give me a great big incentive for figuring out how to interpret an ancient formula for a day-walking potion. If that sounds about as complicated as all the political mumbo jumbo you read about in World History ... well, it is. A whole big web of intrigue with me right there at the center. And, yes, I realize that I should have known better. My only excuse is that my usually sharp brain was operating under the influence of lust. Who wouldn't lust after Stephen? He was gorgeous, he was flirty, and before I knew it, he was plying me with Bloody Mary's and nibbling on my neck. The nibbling was real. The Bloody Mary's weren't. Or, rather, they were a bit too real, especially the "blood" part. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in shallow grave, gagging on dirt, and confused as hell. I'm smart, though, so I figured out pretty fast that I'd joined that lovely little fraternity of vampyr. After that, I started plotting revenge, and when I learned that I could be restored to human if I killed the vampire who made me, I ramped those efforts up one-thousand percent. After all, the scenario was perfect: Kill Stephen, rid the world of one less vampire, get revenge for the dirty trick he played on me, and get my life back. There was only one problem, and I should have seen it coming. I've watched a billion movies over the course of my life, right? And the best ones always have a twist at the end. Something unexpected in the third act that turns the plot one-hundred and eighty degrees. I knew that, and yet I never thought to apply it to my own life. I should have, though. I'd spent all my free time figuring out how to kill Stephen Wills, but once he was dead, I was still a vampire. Stephen Wills, it turns out, didn't make me. I have no idea whose blood I'd drunk in that fateful Bloody Mary. But unless I find out—unless I kill my real master—I'm going to stay undead forever. Chapter 1 "But you don't know who to kill," Jenny protested, her whispered voice barely audible. We were huddled together at our usual table in the cafeteria, and Jenny was determined to talk about this. "That's the point," I said, glaring at her. "I need you to help me figure it out." She leaned back in her chair and eyed me critically, then turned that same intense inspection to the contents of her lunch sack. "Peanut butter again?" I asked, hoping to distract her. Jenny shook her head, her expression filled with disgust. "I told mom that she needed to put a little more consideration into the caloric value of my lunches. Peanut butter is out." "So what do you have?" "Sushi," she announced, her face pale. "She's feeding me raw fish. She is so punishing me for not making my own lunches." I laughed. "I love sushi." She shoved the bag toward me. "Then you eat it." A half second later, she pulled the bag back, her face a mask of contrition. "Sorry. I -" "It's okay," I said, taking a sip of blood from my Waterloo High School sports bottle. One of the many sports bottles I'd taken to carrying around with me, even though I can barely remember the difference between a field goal and a touch down. Honestly, though, it wasn't okay. It wasn't okay at all. Because I wanted the sushi. I wanted sushi and pizza and movie popcorn. And unless I found the jerkwad vampire whose blood I'd drunk that very first night, I was never going to be eating those things again. "We'll find him," Jenny said, reading my mind. I made a face. "Sorry if I'm not bubbling over with enthusiasm, but I thought I'd taken care of this problem when I'd ... you know." "Whacked Stephen?" "Shhhhhh!" I slunk down in my chair, quickly checking to make sure no one had overheard. "Are you tripping?" Jenny just rolled her eyes. "No one has any reason to think we had anything to do with his disappearance." "That's because no one has any idea at all why he disappeared." "Um, duh. He's in California now, remember?" "I guess." After the whole me-killing-Stephen thing, Chris Freytag had started a rumor that Stephen's dad had been transferred to Los Angeles. One of those sudden thing that—poof—made the star quarterback suddenly pack up and leave in the middle of his senior year. Chris is a vamp, too. And although I'd at first thought he'd had it in for me, it turned out that we had a mutual hatred of Stephen. Frankly, I'd have thought Chris would have come up with a more inventive explanation. But since I'd been in too much of a state to think about anything—much less what the school would think about the sudden disappearance of the homecoming king—I did appreciate the effort. A few of us knew the truth, of course. But those of us who did knew the whole truth—that Stephen was a vamp, and that he'd been making more vamps on campus. The rest of the student body was blissfully unaware. I took another big slurp of my blood. "It just really sucks, you know? At least before, I knew who to plan against. This time, I've got nothing. I need to kill my maker, but how? I don't even know where to start. It's driving me nuts!" I said the last part way too loudly considering that everyone sitting near us in the caf turned to stare at us. With my heightened senses (the kind that come from being the subject of gossip, not from being a vampire) I noticed several groups of girls lean in toward each other, then point toward me and whisper. "Great," I said. "Isn't that just great?" Jenny cocked her head, started to say something, and then stopped. "What?" I demanded. "It's just ... nothing." "What?" I repeated. "Well! You're so moody lately!" I leaned closer to Jenny. "Under the circumstances, you'd be moody too." "Just ignore them," she said, rummaging in her backpack and finally coming up victorious with a Milky Way bar. "What about the caloric value of your lunch?" "This isn't lunch," she said. "It's a snack." She peeled the wrapper back, bit in, and sank back in her chair with a bliss-filled sigh. I resisted the urge to knock the candy out of her hand. Okay, maybe Jenny was right; maybe I was a little touchy. She swallowed and looked at me, one eyebrow raised. "This is going to pass and someone else will be next week's rumor. It's not like you did sleep with him, right? You'd tell me. Wouldn't you?" "We slept," I said, sulkily. "And that's all." Well, not all, but Jenny already knew about the whole turning-Clayton-into-a-vampire thing, and I didn't really care to repeat it. She took another bite of candy. "There you go. Why do you care what the rest of these morons think?" I didn't know why I cared. All I knew was that I did. I'd spent over twenty-four hours crammed in a janitor's closet, practically drowning in guilt. I shouldn't have done it, but what choice had I had? Do nothing, and Clayton would have died. I couldn't let that happen. And in one of those ironic twists worthy of an essay question in English lit class, I ended up killing him myself. He'd died, but he hadn't died. He was like me. Undead. Stuck in a living hell. But did anyone care about my heart-wrenching, gut-turning decision? No, they did not. Instead, when Clayton and I emerged from the basement right after sunset, exhausted and rumpled and quite the worse for wear, the few kids still loitering in the halls who saw us jumped to their own non-vampiric conclusions. By the time I got home less than two hours later, I had seventeen emails asking me if it was true. It was almost enough to make me think I was popular, what with that many people speculating about my love life. Almost, but not quite. "Do you want me to put something on the blog?" Jenny asked. "Something about how you guys didn't sleep together?" I shook my head. Jenny is the voice behind the The Waterloo Watch, a hugely popular blog that posts and comments on the burning gossip of the day at Waterloo High. I, however, am the only one who knows that, since the author of the blog is completely anonymous. The site had started out as a fun little thing she did, but then it started getting a massive number of hits. Now, there's probably not a student in the school who doesn't visit the site at least once a day. "Power of the press," Jenny was always saying, and for the most part, I had to agree with her. "Don't write anything," I said. "That would only make people think about it more." "Focus, Beth," Jenny said. "He is your boyfriend. People are going to think it anyway." "One," I said, counting on my fingers. "He's barely my boyfriend." Sad, but true. We were still in that nascent dating period. That whole getting-to-know you stage that can be so easily ruined by, oh, one half of the new couple turning the other half into a vampire. "And two, there isn't a person at this school who thinks about me on a regular basis. Not unless they have a reason to." "Well, that's true," Jenny agreed, and we both stayed quiet for a second, glorying in the delightful anonymity bestowed by extreme unpopular-ness. "Except for the barely part," Jenny added after a moment. "I think about you. And Clayton is totally into you." I grunted noncommittally. There are probably statistics about the number of relationships destroyed by unrequested vampire turning, but I didn't intend to be the one to look them up. Jenny watched my face, her own expression worried. "Do you think he's going to break up with you over the whole blood sharing thing?" she asked. "Was he acting all weird after he woke up? Because you didn't tell me if he was acting weird." "He'd just realized he'd been turned into a vampire," I said, unable to keep the exasperation out of my voice. "I think a little weird is to be expected." "So he was weird?" "Yes," I said, then frowned. "Or, no. Not really." I looked at her helplessly. "Is it weird that he wasn't weird?" "No, no, no," she said, but with almost too much sincerity, you know? "Clayton's a cool guy. That's just Clayton being normal." A little 'v' appeared between her eyebrows. "That's what you mean, right? That he seemed cool with ... you know ... everything?" "Yeah," I said, remembering back. "He was cool." I frowned. Maybe a little too cool? I'd told him I was sorry, and he'd said it was all right. But he hadn't kissed me. He hadn't done much of anything, really. Oh, god. I wasn't about to get dumped by the only boyfriend I'd ever had. Was I? "Is he freaked by the rumors?" Jenny asked. "Is that why he's not here?" I shook my head slowly, starting to feel a little better as I remembered his reaction. "No. It didn't seem to faze him." Typical guy. His reputation could only be improved. "But he's still getting his strength up." While vamps can walk around during the day—inside, away from the sun -- it takes a lot of caffeine to manage it. And considering Clayton was still getting used to his brand-new, liquid diet, he hadn't wanted to push it. And I hadn't pushed him. "I told him I'd bring by a few liters after school today. He's probably already blown through my stash." I learned pretty quickly to keep a cache of blood handy. Fortunately, my dad's a doctor and I have a part-time job at the hospital. I've been begging and stealing blood as part of a science project, and so far no one's batted an eye. "Well, there you go. You're already planning on seeing each other again, and he's not trying to avoid you. That's good. And you're taking him food. That's very domestic. Very girlfriendish." "You think?" "Absolutely." "Okay," I said, somewhat reassured. "Okay, then." "Back to business," Jenny said. "What do you want me to do?" "I don't know," I admitted. "I have to figure out who made me. Since it wasn't Stephen, I'm all out of ideas. A teacher, maybe?" I tried to picture all the teachers in the school. Were there any I'd never seen outside in the direct sunlight? "It could be one of the other jocks," Jenny said reasonably. After all, quite a few of the team had joined the ranks of the undead. "There are too many options. And I need to be sure." I didn't have any compunction about killing off the vamps who'd sucked me into this world, but my willingness wasn't the issue. A vampire can't directly kill anyone equal to or higher than them on the undead family tree. Craftier methods are required—hiring assassins, rigging decapitations, that kind of thing. And valedictorian or no, I didn't think I had it in me to be crafty that many times over. "Maybe Kevin has an idea," Jenny offered. I'd recently met Kevin, a cute college kid who also happened to be a vampire hunter. He'd let me live because there was still a chance I could be made human. At least, that's what he said. Jenny says he's hot for me. "I can ask him," I said. Not because I was hot for him—I had a boyfriend, after all—but because she was right. Next to the actual vamp population, Kevin probably knew as much about the undead goings-on at Waterloo High as anyone. "Does Kevin know about Clayton?" Jenny asked. I rolled my eyes. "God, Jen. We haven't been dating that long, and it's not like I'm spilling my personal life to every cute college guy I meet." She stared me down. "Guilty much?" she asked, and I immediately blushed. Jenny laughed. "You're allowed to think college boys are hot, even if you're dating a high school boy. It's like the golden rule." "I don't—" I began, but she held up a hand, effectively cutting me off. "Don't even," she said. "My question wasn't about your love life. It was about whether Kevin knows Clayton's a vamp now." "Oh." I considered that. "I'm not sure. If he doesn't now, he will pretty soon. He's got a pretty strong spidey sense for vampires." "Will he try to ... you know?" I licked my lips, feeling more than a little protective of my boyfriend-turned-vampiric protégé. "No way," I said, but I was frowning. "He let me live, right? And Clayton hasn't fed on living blood either. So long as Kevin knows that Clayton can still be turned back to human, he won't try to take him out." Jenny stared at me. "What?" I demanded. "Nothing," she said, looking away. "I was just ... nothing." Clearly it wasn't nothing, and I pressed the point. "Honest, Beth," she said. "I was being stupid. Really. No big." I took a deep breath, because I was pretty sure I knew what she'd been thinking. "Clayton wouldn't kill me," I said. She cocked her head. "You're sure about that?" "Duh," I said. "He's my boyfriend, remember?" Which wasn't really an answer at all. A little fact that Jenny picked up on right away. She may not pull straight-A's, but Jenny's no slouch. And from the way she was looking at me, I knew she wasn't sharing my confidence level. "There's no reason for him to kill me," I said. "It makes more sense for him to help me kill my master. Then we'll both turn back." "You're sure?" "Pretty sure." "Okay," she said, shrugging slightly. "Then I guess you're safe." She frowned, and I knew what she was thinking. You can't spend every year from pre-school to high school with someone and not learn to read their thoughts. And right then, Jenny was wondering what Clayton would do if I couldn't find my maker. Or, if finding him, I couldn't manage to kill him. I was wondering the same thing. Clayton loved me and all, but did he love me enough to stay a vampire for all eternity? I truly didn't know. Jenny took the last bite of her Milky Way. "Do you want me to go with you? To see Clayton?" I opened my mouth to protest; I so didn't need a bodyguard to go to see my boyfriend. Nothing bad was going to happen to me. Then I remembered that fateful afternoon when I'd gone to meet Stephen Wills on the football field. I'd told myself then that I was only meeting a boy, and look how that had turned out. I pushed down the thought and straightened my shoulders, determined not to lose faith in the first boyfriend I'd ever had. "No, thanks," I said firmly. "I'll be fine." I could only hope that I would. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Buy the Book Amazon Barnes & Noble Booksense