The Keeper's Vow (5 page)

“Allison,” Katie said as soon as Lucinda was
out of earshot.

Allison put her finger to her lips to
silence Katie and told her to follow her into the kitchen. Allison
walked past the spotless island, past the other kitchen door and
walk-in pantry, and all the way to the breakfast nook on the far
side of the kitchen. It was a cozy spot under a darkening window.
They could see someone coming from both doors if they needed
to.

“This is so freaking exciting. You’re one of
us now. Ohmygod. I’m so mad this didn’t happen before.
You
could have been my partner instead of Brian. If I had
known—ohmygod. Kay,
this
is freaking awesome.”

“I need you to take three steps back,
because your idea of awesome is grossly skewed.” Katie leaned
against the table and sighed. Already everything started to feel
like a jacked-up dream. It hadn’t happened. There were no such
things as vampires, or
whatever
Glock was. Nothing about
Tristan screamed anything more than teen boy—except his death grip
on her arm and him walking around hours after being stabbed.

“Once the shock wears off, you’ll see what I
mean. I finally get to tell you
everything
. Do you know how
hard it was
not
calling you the first time I met a werewolf,
or telling you how incredibly awesome it is to be the only level-3
in my class.” Allison rummaged through the cabinets and pulled out
two bowls. Katie opened the freezer and shifted a bag of frozen
broccoli to get to the rainbow sherbet ice cream she knew was in
the back just for her. For a second she expected it to be gone. How
could it be there—so normal—while Allison was spouting off things
about creatures that only existed in fantasy.

She grabbed the sherbet and found the
chocolate for Allison. “What exactly have I signed my life over
to?” Katie wanted to sound sarcastic and calm, but her voice
cracked.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Kay. If anything
you’ve just been offered a once in a lifetime opportunity. You are
a guardian now. Well, technically you’ve always been one, but now
you get to
actually
be one.”

Katie stared at her blankly as she sat the
ice cream boxes on the table and slid into the booth. Not even the
sherbet could ease the anxiety she felt in every inch of her
body.

“It really isn’t anything scary,
just—cool.”

“That is the vaguest thing you’ve ever said
to me.” The sweet flavors of her rainbow sherbet were gone, and she
wasn’t even two spoonfuls into the bowl. She let go of her spoon
and moved the bowl away from her.

“Kay, I’ve been studying for two and a half
years. All I’ve done, so far, is meet a bunch of normal looking
people and take tours around a city. It really isn’t a big deal.
We’re just in on a secret that no one else is. That’s the cool
part. I mean, if you’re hard core, when we graduate you could go
into a department that does bounties.”

“Bounties…like be a bounty hunter?” Katie’s
eyes widened. “A bounty hunter?”

“Normally that’s a Level-0 job.” Allison
stopped mid-spoonful and put the spoon back in the bowl. “But it’s
really rare to get a job like that. You have to be, like, really
good. That story I told Henrietta doesn’t happen often. Most of a
guardians work is to keep people from going downside and keeping
and eye on our non-human friends and in some cases integrating
newly changed people into both societies. There’s a department for
that, but it’s pretty lame. No action there—it’s like, ‘here is a
blood bank where you can buy your ounces, and raw steaks are
cheapest in these locations—blah blah—here’s a pamphlet—blah
blah—give us a call if you want to join the: Cry About Your
Adjustment Problems group’.” Allison looked up and shrugged at
Katie’s blinking eyes. “What? It was the worst field trip of my
life.”

Katie bit her bottom lip. How could she
freak out when her best friend was sitting across from her eating
chocolate ice cream and grinning.

Allison threw her head back—her red hair
rocking back and forth in her ponytail. “You’re gonna flip,” she
laughed. “I’ve got
the
biggest and juiciest gossip.”

Katie grabbed her sherbet and mixed the
liquid and solid swirls. “You could strip down and dance naked on
the counter tops and it wouldn’t phase me. I’m all out of shock for
today.”

Allison laughed harder. “Okay, then. Mr.
Right, our math teacher. Guardian. Mr. Rhineheart. Guardian. Even
Myrtle the office lady. All of them.”

Katie was wrong. There was still a little
shock left. “
Mr. Right
? He’s so—
so boring.
” She
imagined her dad freaking out after he found out the private school
he’d been paying for was a hoax. Then again, he knew didn’t he?

“Yep. The teachers, the principle, the
secretary, the nurse, I think even the janitors are all guardians.
That accelerated program I’m in, is a cover up. They’re my training
classes.”

“Wait, why? At our school of all
schools?”

“We live, in a guardian community.
Apparently, It used to be a school that only taught guardians, but
then some starting marrying outside of the community and more kids
weren’t born guardian than were—so in order to keep the secret and
not risk looking suspicious, we just blend in. We can weed out most
of the normal kids from guardian families by pretending they don’t
meet ‘Hamilton High standards’ but there aren’t enough of us in
training to make up a real school. And that’s how you get an
accelerated program.” Allison shrugged.

“You mean to tell me Christi Taylor is a
guardian?” Katie scowled, thinking about every time that girl said,
‘Accelerated program,’ as if she were a toe away from Harvard.

“I like how
that’s
the first thing
you think of.” Allison said, scooping out more ice cream from the
box.

“They really shouldn’t call it that, it’s
misleading.”

“I think that’s the point, Kay. She really
doesn’t have anything to boast about, she’s mediocre at best.”
Allison laughed and threw up her hands dramatically. “OMG. I can
totally tell you what
really
happened to Crispy Christi
now!”

Katie laughed. “How could you keep a name
like
Crispy Christi
from me?”

Allison stopped laughing long enough to say,
“You remember when you found out she wore that wig?”

Katie’s mouth dropped. Christi used to flip
her hair in Katie’s face,
“The other day my stylist said she’d
die for hair like mine. She’s in love with my volume.”
That
stupid girl hated the way Katie’s hair was frizz-free with natural
looping curls throughout. Time and time again she’d come to the
school with some weird puffy copycat version until the year they
started high school, it was as if her hair had transformed. Her
hair bounced with every step and shined with silky sheen. Even
Katie was envious for a few months—until she found Christi in the
bathroom shifting the “head of curls” on her head.

“She said she wore a wig because her
‘stylist’ gave her a bad hair cut,” Katie said, reliving that
glorious moment Christi spun around so fast her wig tilted.

Allison burst into a new set of giggles.
“That summer before high school, remember we went off to that
summer camp?”

Katie could never forget that summer. She
wanted so bad to go to camp with Brian and Allison. She’d begged
her dad week after week until he snapped. They couldn’t afford it
and he told her that she needed to grow up. It was the first and
only time he’d ever yelled at her. She still wasn’t completely over
it. If she had known they had money problems she never would have
brought it up. She never asked him for anything extra again. “I
remember,” Katie said, taking in a small mouth-full of ice
cream.

“That’s where they revealed the big secret.
Christi smuggled in
at least
twenty candles.” Allison rolled
her eyes. “She’d always light them around her head board and on her
night stand. One night she laid down on her bed and the next thing
I knew she was screaming bloody murder and her hair went up in
flames.” Allison laughed herself to tears. “I swear to God, you
know how much hair spray she wears, I thought the whole camp was
going to explode.”

Katie laughed hard. It felt good to
laugh.

“She pretty much had a buzz cut until camp
was over. It was either that or leave early and forfeit her right
to be a guardian.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t opt to have her
memory erased,” Katie laughed.

“Even Christi wouldn’t risk that.” Allison
paused. “Remember Neil Tanner?”

“Scanner Tanner?” He was the only kid in
their middle school with a photographic memory. It was starting to
click for her. “Let me guess. He’s not at some ivy-league private
school in Washington?”

“Nope. He went to camp and had a break down.
Said he wanted to go back to his normal life. They called an
omitter and now he goes to a public school in Meridian.”

Katie looked up. When everyone found out
Neil wasn’t at Hamilton High, trumor spread that he’d gotten a
scholarship to a college prep school. A public school the next city
over was far from that.

“Last I heard, he’s still in the ninth-grade
and can barely remember his own name.” Allison looked down into her
bowl of lumpy chocolate soup and shrugged. “I wouldn’t have let
them do that to you. I would have fought them off and took you to
the mountains or something.”

Katie smiled and stared down at her own
lumpy rainbow swirl. Her eyes burned. It didn’t matter what else
anyone told her about this world or any other. She’d be okay
because she had Allison—even Brian was only trying to protect her
in his own way. Her two best friends were on her side. She scooped
up her soft ice cream and it never tasted better.

“I’m glad that I have you guys,” Katie
said.

“Ha. You have me. Brian got you into this
mess.” Allison rolled her eyes. Katie thought for a moment and
realized the one reason her two best-friends never told her why
they started hating each other—the year the tripod collapsed.

“What happened after you guys found out you
were Guardians?”

Allison frowned. “At the end of summer camp,
we had to pick partners. I picked Brian—obviously. By the end of
freshman year—I don’t know.” The words began to rush from Allison’s
mouth. “At first we were good. We learned things and we had a lot
of fun. Then I picked things up faster than him—he resents me for
being better.”

Katie watched Allison grind her teeth. “Why
didn’t you just change partners?”

“We tried. You aren’t allowed to change
partners until you graduate. It’s supposed to teach us how to work
closely with someone and over come problems. But that’s pretty
pointless when your partner is spiteful and lies to everyone and
himself.” Allison stood up and put her bowl in the sink. The spoon
raked across the bowl.

Katie checked the kitchen doorways out of
guilt. She expected him to walk in at any moment with a look of
pure betrayal written on his face.

“He’s lucky he didn’t get expelled for
having a bounty hunting knife, let alone bringing it to school.”
Allison slunk back into the breakfast nook.

“Where’d he get it?—Will? Will? A bounty
hunter?” No.

“Used to be. Now he’s on the board. Lucinda
used to be a level-0 bounty hunter too, but a long time ago she got
hurt so bad she had to retire.”

“What happened?” Katie asked, remembering
the way Lucinda sometimes rubbed her hip.

“I don’t know, they never talk about it.”
Allison slapped her hands down on the table making Katie jump. She
looked at the doorway and lowered her voice. “There’s only one
reason why Lucy is coming out of retirement.” Allison’s eyes grew
wide. “There are only two types of vampires that can walk around in
the day, pure bloods and half-bloods. I’m positive Tristan isn’t a
pure blood, there are only a handful of those left. Plus, Lucy got
him into our school. No way he’d pass the hand test if he were a
pure blood.”

“What—”

“Shhh—Kay. No wonder Will is pissed.
We
probably weren’t supposed to know about any of this.
That’s why he made us lie about what happened.”

Katie leaned in closer. Waiting for Allison
to continue.

“Half-bloods are taboo. At least, giving
birth to one is. Lucinda’s sister must have been a guardian.”

“Allison, I’m not completely following.”
Allison had a way of forgetting that others couldn’t read her
mind.

“Guardian women aren’t supposed to have
relationships with vampires. It’s taboo, especially if she gets
pregnant. Something messed up happens to the baby after it’s born
and they die. But sometimes they live. The teachers try and tell us
they don’t, but
everyone
knows
it’s propaganda. When
the baby lives it’s half-guardian and half-vampire. They’re called
shades, because they will never truly live in the light and or the
dark. They are cursed int he shadows. A bit pretentious to think us
guardians are
‘the light’
but you know how that goes.”

“No I don’t. How can anyone be half human
and half vampire, Allison.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met one, as far as
the school is concerned they don’t exist. I bet my new purse
and
pumps that Lucy came out of retirement to be his mentor.
She wouldn’t trust anyone else with that secret. That’s a secret
that can ruin a family’s reputation.”

Every guardian family has a dirty
secret
. Tristan said it earlier. He was talking about himself.
“But Lucinda said she was going to be my mentor,” Katie said sure
she knew what Allison was going to say. It didn’t take a genius to
put the two together.

Allison nodded. “It’s one mentor per pair.
You and Tristan are going to be partners.”