“You’re a junior, right?”

I nodded, not bothering to question how Skylar knew anything about me other than what I’d already told her.

“I’m a sophomore, so I’m taking European History, not US, but Mr. McCormick teaches them both, so I should have you covered. Find me at lunch, and we’ll talk.”

And with those words, Skylar Hayden, force of nature and self-proclaimed school slut, disappeared into a nearby classroom, leaving me in the hallway alone.

Good, I thought reflexively. It’s better that way.

But for once, I disagreed with the part of my brain that couldn’t help but think like a hunter, even on my human days.

Maybe I don’t want to be alone, I thought back. Maybe I don’t want to be a freak. Did you ever think of that?

Cover your back.

This time, I didn’t resist. I’d spent too much time tracking down monsters to believe even for a second, even in my own high school, that I was ever really safe. Angling my back toward the wall, I headed toward my biology class. The only good thing about this morning’s assembly was that it meant that I didn’t have to listen to my bio teacher waxing poetic about the differences between natural and preternatural species.

The difference, I thought, is that the preternatural ones are too strong, too evil, and too human-hungry to live.

If the rest of the world would just wake up and realize that no, the things I hunted weren’t just misunderstood, and that studying them wasn’t going to make them any less lethal, my job—not to mention my life—would have been so much easier. But no. My life wasn’t meant to be easy.

Nothing ever was.

My muscles ached. My stomach rumbled. I could feel a migraine coming on, and I wanted nothing more than to climb back into bed. It was always like this the day after a hunt. I felt pain. I got tired. I needed to eat.

And I was anything but invincible.

Ducking into the classroom and trudging toward my seat, I looked down at my watch for the third or fourth time since I’d gotten up that morning.

Twenty-one hours and eight minutes until my next switch. Three hours until I saw Skylar at lunch.

This is going to be a very long day.

3

In the three weeks I’d been attending classes at Heritage, I’d learned more about primate social behavior than I’d gleaned from a lifetime of being plunked down in front of the Discovery Channel whenever my father didn’t want to deal with the fact that he had a kid. Social hierarchies, dominance displays, mating rituals … all of the above were present in abundance in our high school cafeteria. Up until today, I’d successfully remained invisible.

And then I’d met Skylar Hayden.

Apparently, she wasn’t kidding when she said talking to her would put me on the rumor radar like that. Already, I could feel the stares, like bugs crawling across the surface of my skin.

Show no fear.

If there was one thing that being what I was had taught me, it was that the difference between predator and prey was the rate of your heartbeat, the sweat trickling from your temples, the urge to shiver and run.

Twelve hours earlier, I hadn’t even been capable of fear. Currently, however, I was feeling it in spades—not that I was about to let anyone else see that. Standing straight and holding my head high, I tossed my dark, glossy hair over one shoulder. The deep brown color was streaked with red highlights, so dark that in the right light, they could have passed for black. Even in a ponytail, my hair was the perfect length for tossing.

Play to your strengths.

Another compulsion, another rule. A good hunter knew her strengths and her weaknesses, her enemies and her prey. Right now, all I knew was that the A-list crowd liked to write derogatory things on people’s lockers, that they had it out for my one and only friend at this high school, and that I was an unknown entity who had just flung herself onto their radar.

Given that the best defense was a good offense, I figured that I could at least be an unknown entity with good hair.

“Kali!”

I recognized Skylar’s voice the moment I heard it. Giving the rest of the school one more second to play Assess the New Girl, I turned in her direction. There, in the very center of the cafeteria, in what even a newcomer like me recognized as prime lunchtime real estate, she was holding court at a table full of … guys.

Clearly, my new friend had no problems whatsoever with the idea of adding fuel to the rumor fire.

“You made it,” Skylar greeted me. “And in one piece, too! Congrats. That was some impressive hair-flipping.”

In other circumstances, I might have been a little frightened by just how perceptive this girl was. At the moment, however, my eyes were trained on the other occupants of her table. There were three of them, and despite the fact that they looked nothing alike, they reminded me of those Russian stacking dolls, the kind that fit perfectly inside one another, in sizes small, medium, and large. The expressions on their faces were identical: curious, but wary.

“Darryl. John Michael. Genevieve.” Skylar said their names one by one, and I attempted to match the monikers to their owners. Darryl was Large. John Michael was Medium. And Genevieve was Small—and, judging by the name, female, which I hadn’t realized until I took a good look at her face. Her hair was cut almost to her scalp, and she was dressed in a nondescript hoodie. I wouldn’t have pegged her for a “Genevieve,” but who was I to judge?

I probably didn’t look like the ultimate predator. Or, for that matter, an environmental terrorist. Depending on the day and who you were talking to, I was both.

“Kali D’Angelo,” I said, introducing myself before Skylar had a chance to repeat my insurgent superhero line on my behalf. Given the illegal nature of my nightly activities, I needed to lie as low as I could. “I’m new. Sort of. I’ve only been here a few weeks….”

And now, I was babbling.

“Italian?” Genevieve asked, having latched on to my last name.

I figured that I owed her for having assumed she was a guy, so I cut her some slack and answered the question she hadn’t asked, which came with a “you don’t look Italian” clipped to the end. “My dad’s Italian. My mom was Indian. From India.”

Watching people try to figure out the mix of genes that had gone in to making me look so “exotic” (FYI: not my favorite word) always made me wonder why they couldn’t see beneath the surface to the power, the instinct, the difference underneath.

Eighteen hours and twelve minutes …

“Kali’s got a history test next period,” Skylar announced, and I couldn’t tell if she was deliberately changing the subject, or if she was just the type who said every thought that crossed her mind. “I told her we had her covered.”

Genevieve and John Michael didn’t react to this announcement at all, but a small smile worked its way onto Darryl’s lips. The light behind his dark brown eyes gave him a sort of gentle-giant vibe; I wondered exactly how tall he was and why the thought of a history exam made him happy.

“Six foot seven,” Skylar said helpfully. “And he’s psyched, because it’s not often we get to initiate someone into the code.”

“The code?” I repeated.

“Darryl’s a whiz with numbers,” Skylar explained. “It’s sort of his thing.”

Darryl ducked his head, and there was something in the motion that told me more about him than I’d known the moment before. He was quiet. Bashful. And I was willing to bet a lot of money that, like me, he had parents who didn’t quite get his so-called “thing.” My father would have preferred a social butterfly of a daughter; Darryl’s parents had probably been hoping for a football player. Instead, fate had dealt them a half-human demon slayer and an oversized mathlete, respectively.

Life’s a bitch.

“You have McCormick for history, yes?” Those were the first words John Michael had spoken since I sat down at the table. I tried to place his accent and failed miserably. It wasn’t American, even though he looked every inch the Boy Next Door. He was dressed from head to toe in black, but it was all too easy to imagine him fronting a boy band or dating a Disney starlet.

Since I was willing to bet that John Michael liked being compared to tween idols about as much as I liked being called exotic, I didn’t say word one about his appearance. Instead, I just nodded.