Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15)(7)

“Crap, I’m sorry, Jailbait. I tried texting. …” I lifted up my phone to show them, except it was the vodka flask I picked up instead. I hastily shoved it back in the bag.

“We had to turn our phones off during the show,” explained Neil. He was the third dhampir in the group, a recent addition to Palm Springs. He’d grown on me over time, maybe because he was suffering from his own heartache. He was head over heels for a dhampir girl who’d dropped off the face of the earth, though unlike Sydney, Olive Sinclair’s silence was most likely from personal baggage and not Alchemist abduction.

“Well … how it’d go then?” I attempted. “I bet your stuff was awesome, right?”

I felt so incredibly stupid, I could hardly stand it. Maybe I couldn’t fight against what the Alchemists had done to Sydney. Maybe I couldn’t prepare for an exam. But for God’s sake, I should’ve at least been able to make it to one girl’s fashion show! All I had to do was show up, sit there, and applaud. I’d failed at even that, and the weight of it was suddenly crushing. A black haze filled my mind, weighing me down, making me hate everything and everyone—myself most of all. It was no wonder I couldn’t save Sydney. I couldn’t even take care of myself.

You don’t need to, Aunt Tatiana whispered in my mind. I’ll take care of you.

A spark of compassion showed in Jill’s eyes as she sensed the dark mood coming on. “It was great. Don’t worry—we’ll show you pictures. They had a professional photographer doing everything, and it’ll go online.”

I tried to swallow back that darkness and managed a tense smile. “Glad to hear it. Well, how about we all go out and celebrate then? Dinner’s on me.”

Jill’s face fell. “Angeline and I are eating with a study group. I mean, maybe I could cancel. Exams are still a month away, so I could always—”

“Forget it,” I said, getting to my feet. “Someone in this bond needs to be ready for exams. Go have fun. I’ll catch you later.”

No one tried to stop me, but Trey Juarez soon fell in step with me. He was perhaps the oddest member of our circle: a human who’d once been part of a group of vampire hunters. He’d broken ties with them, both because they were psycho and because he’d fallen—against all reason—for Angeline. Those two were the only ones in our little group with any semblance of a happy love life, and I knew they tried to downplay it for the rest of us miserable souls.

“And how exactly are you going to get home?” asked Trey.

“Who says I’m going home?” I retorted.

“Me. You have no business going out and partying. You look like crap.”

“You’re the second person to tell me that today.”

“Well, then, maybe you’ll start listening,” he said, steering me toward the student parking lot. “Come on, I’ll drive.”

It was an easy offer for him to make because he was my roommate.

Things hadn’t started out that way. He’d been a boarder at Amberwood, living at school with the others. His former group, the Warriors of Light, had the same hang-ups the Alchemists had about humans and vampires interacting. Whereas the Alchemists dealt with this by covering up the existence of vampires from ordinary humans, the Warriors took a much more savage approach and hunted vampires. They claimed they only went after Strigoi, but they were no friends to Moroi or dhampirs either.

When Trey’s father had found out about Angeline, he’d taken a different approach than Sydney’s father. Rather than kidnapping his son and making him disappear without a trace, Mr. Juarez had simply disowned Trey and cut off all his funding. Lucky for Trey, tuition had already been paid for through the end of the school year. Room and board had not, and so the Amberwood dorm had turned Trey out a few months ago. He’d shown up on my doorstep, offering to pay me rent with his meager coffee shop earnings so that he could finish high school at Amberwood. I’d welcomed him in and refused the money, knowing it was what Sydney would’ve wanted. My only condition had been that I had better never, ever come home and find him making out with Angeline on my couch.

“I suck,” I said, after several minutes of uncomfortable silence into our drive.

“Is that some kind of vampire joke?” Trey asked.

I shot him a look. “You know what I mean. I screwed up. No one asks that much of me. Not anymore. All I had to do was remember to go to her fashion show, and I blew it.”

“You’ve had a lot of crap going on,” he said diplomatically.

“So has everyone else. Hell, look at you. Your whole family denies your existence and did their best to get you kicked out of school. You found a workaround, kept up your grades and sports, and managed to nab some scholarships in the process,” I sighed. “Meanwhile, I may have failed an introductory art class. A few of them, actually, if I’ve got more exams coming this week—which seems likely. I don’t even know.”

“Yeah, but I’ve still got Angeline. And that makes it worth putting up with all the other crap. Whereas you …” Trey couldn’t finish, and I saw pain flash over his tanned features.

My friends here in Palm Springs knew about Sydney and me. They were the only ones in the Moroi world (or the human world that shadowed the Moroi) who knew about our relationship. They felt bad for what had happened for my sake and also for hers. They’d loved Sydney too. Not like I did, of course, but she was the kind of person who was fiercely loyal and inspired deep bonds in her friends.