"I don't know. There's no telling what she or some of the other high-up royals will do sometimes." He suddenly looked tired. He reached into his pocket and tossed over a set of keys. "Look, I know you're upset, but we can't talk about it now. I have to go meet Alberta, and you need to get inside. The square key will let you in the far side door. You know the one."
I did. "Yeah. Thanks."
I was sulking and hated to be that way - especially since he was saving me from getting in trouble - but I couldn't help it. Victor Dashkov was a criminal - a villain, even. He was power-hungry and greedy and didn't care who he stepped on to get his way. If he were loose again...well, there was no telling what might happen to Lissa or any other Moroi. It enraged me to think that I could do something to help put him away but that no one would let me do it.
I'd taken a few steps forward when Dimitri called out from behind me. "Rose?" I glanced back. "I'm sorry," he said. He paused, and his expression of regret turned wary. "And you'd better bring the keys back tomorrow."
I turned away and kept going. It was probably unfair, but some childish part of me believed Dimitri could do anything. If he'd really wanted to get Lissa and me to the trial, I was certain he could have.
When I was almost to the side door, I caught movement in my peripheral vision. My mood plummeted. Great. Dimitri had given me keys to sneak back in, and now someone else had busted me. That was typical of my luck. Half-expecting a teacher to demand to know what I was doing, I turned and prepared an excuse.
But it wasn't a teacher.
"No," I said softly. This had to be a trick. "No."
For half an instant, I wondered if I'd ever really woken up. Maybe I was actually still in bed, asleep and dreaming.
Because surely, surely that was the only explanation for what I was now seeing in front of me on the Academy's lawn, lurking in the shadow of an ancient, gnarled oak.
It was Mason.
TWO
Or, well, it looked like mason.
He - or it or whatever - was hard to see. I had to keep squinting and blinking to get him in focus. His form was insubstantial - almost translucent - and kept fading in and out of my field of vision.
But yes, from what I could see, he definitely looked like Mason. His features were washed out, making his fair skin look whiter than I recalled. His reddish hair now appeared as a faint, watery orange. I could barely even see his freckles. He was wearing exactly what I'd last seen him in: jeans and a yellow fleece jacket. The edge of a green sweater peeped out from underneath the coat's hem. Those colors, too, were all softened. He looked like a photograph that someone had left out in the sun, causing it to fade. A very, very faint glow seemed to outline his features.
The part that struck me the most - aside from the fact that he was supposed to be dead - was the look on his face. It was sad - so, so sad. Looking into his eyes, I felt my heart break. All the memories of what had taken place just a few weeks ago came rushing back to me. I saw it all again: his body falling, the cruel look on the Strigoi faces.... A lump formed in my throat. I stood there frozen, stunned and unable to move.
He studied me too, his expression never changing. Sad. Grim. Serious. He opened his mouth, like he might speak, and then closed it. Several more heavy moments hung between us, and then he lifted his hand and extended it toward me. Something in that motion snapped me out of my daze. No, this could not be happening. I wasn't seeing this. Mason was dead. I'd seen him die. I'd held his body.
His fingers moved slightly, like he was beckoning, and I panicked. Backing up a few steps, I put distance between us and waited to see what would happen. He didn't follow. He simply stood there, hand still in the air. My heart lurched, and I turned and ran. When I'd almost reached the door, I stopped and glanced back, letting my ragged breathing calm down. The clearing he'd stood in was completely empty.
I made it up to my room and slammed the door behind me, hands shaking. I sank onto my bed and replayed what had just happened.
What the hell? That had not been real. No way. Impossible. Mason was dead, and everyone knows the dead don't come back. Well, yeah, I had come back...but that was a different situation.
Clearly, I'd imagined this. That was it. It had to be. I was overtired and still reeling from Lissa and Christian, not to mention that Victor Dashkov news. Probably the cold had frozen part of my brain too. Yes, the more I thought about it, the more I decided there had to be a hundred explanations for what had just happened.
Yet, no matter how often I told myself that, I couldn't fall back asleep. I lay in my bed, covers pulled to my chin as I tried to banish that haunting image from my mind. I couldn't. All I could see were those sad, sad eyes, those eyes that seemed to say, Rose, why did you let this happen to me?
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to think about him. Since Mason's funeral, I'd been working so hard to go on and act like I was strong. But the truth was, I was nowhere near being over his death. I tortured myself day after day with what if? questions. What if I'd been faster and stronger during the Strigoi fight? What if I hadn't told him where the Strigoi were in the first place? And what if I'd simply been able to return his love? Any of those could have kept him alive, but none of them had happened. And it was all my fault.
"I imagined it," I whispered out loud into the darkness of my room. I had to have imagined it. Mason already haunted my dreams. I didn't need to see him when I was awake too. "It wasn't him."
It couldn't have been him, because the only way it could have been was...Well, that was something I didn't want to think about. Because while I believed in vampires and magic and psychic powers, I most certainly did not believe in ghosts.
I apparently didn't believe in sleep, either, because I didn't get much of it that night. I tossed and turned, unable to quiet my racing mind. I eventually did drift off, but it seemed like my alarm went off so soon after that I could have hardly slept for more than a few minutes.
Among humans, the light of day tends to chase off nightmares and fear. I had no such daylight; I awoke to increasing darkness. But just being out with real and living people had nearly the same effect, and as I went to breakfast and my morning practice, I found that what I'd seen last night - or what I thought I'd seen last night - was growing fainter and fainter in my memory.
The weirdness of that encounter was also being replaced by something else: excitement. This was it. The big day. The start of our field experience.
For the next six weeks, I wouldn't have any classes. I'd get to spend my days hanging out with Lissa, and the most I'd have to do was write a daily field report that was only about a half-page long. Easy. And, yeah, of course I'd be on guard duty, but I wasn't concerned. That was second nature to me. She and I had lived among humans for two years, and I'd protected her the whole time. Before that, when I'd been a freshman, I'd seen the kinds of tests the adult guardians planned for novices during this phase. The ordeals were tricky, absolutely. A novice had to be on watch and not slack - and be ready to defend and attack if necessary. None of that worried me, though. Lissa and I had been away from the school our sophomore and junior years, and I'd fallen behind then. Thanks to my extra practices with Dimitri, I'd quickly caught up and was now one of the best in my class.