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  “What? Has someone else died?” I said, flashing back to Cinnamon’s insight. “Savannah?”

  “The Consulate has kept this quiet,” Savannah began, “so we won’t anger the Gentry—”

  “The who?”

  “Atlanta’s old-school vampires,” Savannah said, clearly irritated. “But now the police are involved, we need the opposite tack. We must show Sir Leopold and his crew of wingnuts we’re doing something,” she said, pulling off her goggles. Behind her squint, I could see that she was pleading. “We need someone who knows vampires, and magic, and has good relations with the police: you. We really need your help, Dakota.”

  I swallowed. “Help with what?” My head was buzzing with questions, but I was stuck on the idea that she needed me to be her go-between. “What do you want me to tell the police?”

  —

  “Revenance isn’t the first vampire we’ve lost this week. He’s the third.”

  Educational Experience

  “Thanks for handling this, Rand,” I said, slowing the Prius for the turn into the Clairmont Academy’s drive. “Savannah says to call Nagli, she’ll give you all the details.”

  “Why can’t she call me directly?” Rand’s disembodied voice asked. “If vampires really are disappearing, they should have called the police right away—”

  “Of course they should have,” I said. “But her high-and-mightiness ‘the Lady Saffron’ got deliberately vague, started talking about the Gentry, about keeping an arm’s length between factions. I gather vampire politics are involved.”

  “Jesus. Vampire politics are always involved,” Rand said. “Thanks for passing on the message, Dakota, we’ll handle it. Good luck to you guys today.”

  “Thanks.” I hung up and glanced at Cinnamon. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Cinnamon nodded, swallowed, just staring.

  Clairmont Academy was a modernist structure, nestled into a hillside so cunningly Frank Lloyd Wright would have been proud. The main offices were long straight jet of glass and slate erupting from a stand of magnolias. Classrooms climbed the hill behind the offices in an arc of terraced wedges: the overall effect was of a wave curling over a surfboard. Oh so chic.

  I pulled into the visitor spaces angled off the dropoff lane. “Just … try to be nice?”

  Cinnamon nodded again, then pulled down the vanity mirror, trying to fix her hair. Then she slipped out a tiny vial of her distinctive cinnamon oil perfume, which I now knew she used to hide her tiger musk, and dabbed it behind her ears and whiskers.

  “Just relax,” I said. “You look fine. Better than I do, in fact, my little schoolgirl.”

  Cinnamon hissed and swatted. “OK, DaKOta,” she said, fwapping the mirror back up. “But remember, this getup is just to impress the squares that runs the schools. I’m not gonna change on my days off, and don’t you goes all Laura Ashley on me either.”

  “How do you know about Laura Ashley?” I asked. “You were, what, two years old?”

  “Thrift stores are your friend,” Cinnamon said. “Not that I’d buy one—”

  “Hey, don’t go dissing her. I have a Laura Ashley,” I said with a grin. “A big old floral tent feeding the moths back home in Dad’s house in Stratton, South Carolina.”

  Cinnamon grinned and unbuckled her seat belt. I did so as well, resisting the urge to check myself in the mirror: she was finally relaxing, and I didn’t want to make her nervous again. Saffron had let me clean the blood off in her bathroom, after insisting that I clean the sink and flush the wipes. I looked as good as I was going to get, and that would have to be good enough.

  We got out of the car and walked to the front door, a huge glass slab. In it I could see our distinctive outlines: tall, coated, and deathhawked, hand resting on short, skirted and cat-eared. The door slid smoothly aside on its own, replacing our reflections with a small, mousy brunette, in circa 1980s ecru wool crepe jacket and navy floral dress, who was staring at us in horror.

  After a few awkward moments, I broke the ice.

  “Dakota Frost,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Catherine Fremont,” the woman replied, eyes taking me in from ankles to earrings. Then she seemed to notice my hand and took it gladly, like a lifeline—and I found her tiny hand surprisingly strong in mine. “Catherine Fremont, admissions.”

  “And this must be Cinnamon,” I supplied, as she kept pumping my hand.

  “What? Oh! Yes. I’m sorry,” Fremont said, letting go of my hand awkwardly as she did a similar double-take at Cinnamon. She pulled a pair of half-rimmed glasses out of her hair and peered at Cinnamon, as if never taught it’s not polite to stare. “And this must be Cinnamon.”

  And then her mouth quirked in a skeptical grin, and she raised the glasses to look at me. “Is her name really ‘Cinnamon Frost’?”

  “Yes,” Cinnamon hissed, but I squeezed her shoulder.

  “And no,” I said. “Her birth name is—unfortunate. We don’t use it anymore.”

  “And so why did you pick Cinnamon?” Fremont said, frowning. “You wanted your daughter to be the butt of jokes?”

  “Believe it or not,” I said, “it was a complete accident. I didn’t know I was adopting her when I suggested her name. Actually, I didn’t even know I was suggesting her name—I just called attention to her perfume and it … stuck.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Fremont said. “Well … shall we get started?”

  She gestured, then followed her own gesture back into the lobby, clearly expecting us to follow. Cinnamon and I stared at each other a moment, weighing the unspoken question: should we bail? But neither of us made that first move away, so we followed.

  Catherine Fremont was tiny, no taller than Cinnamon, but she carried herself well, the navy dress flaring out widely as she turned the corner. I could now see her outfit was brand new, with retro classic touches; still, there was something familiar about it … and eventually I got it.

  “Laura Ashley?” I asked, with a smirk.

  “Bramble Brooch,” she replied, with a toss of her long, straight hair. I caught a bit of a smile in her cheek as she leaned her head back at me. “Basically Laura Ashley, remixed.”

  Her high-heeled Victorian boots clicked against the slate tile, drawing my attention. Nice. Just then Fremont pulled out a keyfob and clicked it, and what I thought was a glass wall slid aside to open on her office. Fremont’s office had a huge plate window overlooking the courtyard and classrooms. It looked like it could slide open the same way the hallway glass had. Fremont sat behind a dark wood desk and mouse-woke an old-school, blueberry iMac.

  “Speaking of dress,” Fremont said, lowering her glasses again, “I appreciate Cinnamon’s efforts to conform to our dress code, but it also extends to makeup and accessories. The henna will have to go—as will the cat ears, I’m afraid.”

  Cinnamon flattened her ears, mortified, and I frowned. “Cinnamon’s ears and tail are not ‘accessories,’” I said coldly, sitting and motioning for Cinnamon to do so as well. “They’re a part of her. I thought I was clear that she was an extraordinary needs child.”

  Fremont looked up sharply, then seemed to jump. “Oh my goodness,” she said, staring at Cinnamon’s head so hard I thought her gaze would knock it off. Then she sat up a little to get a glimpse of her tail. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize she was a … a compulsory were-cat—”

  “Weretiger,” I said, even more coldly, as Cinnamon squirmed, “and I thought you said Clairmont Academy was equipped to deal with extraordinary needs children.”

  “I-I’m so sorry,” Fremont said, embarrassed, putting her hand over her mouth. “I-I mean, yes, we are, but I personally have never seen a werekin, that is, one who couldn’t change back.”

  “How large is your extraordinary needs program if a lifer weretiger is a surprise?”

  “We don’t use the term lifer, and as it turns out, we don’t have a compulsory,” Fremont said. “We do have, though, a variety of extraordinary individuals. For privacy reason
s I can’t go into specifics, but we have, um … werewolves, and, and … a dhampyr, I mean, dhampyrs—”

  “Meaning one of each,” I said. “For a total extraordinary enrollment of, what, two?”

  I considered getting up and walking out, but Fremont seemed to gather herself. “I may be new here, Miss Frost, but I assure you that this is not new to the Academy,” she said quietly. “We have a dozen individuals on staff who have experience with extraordinary needs children, of whom we have several. I’m sorry that I was insensitive towards Cinnamon’s condition. It was a misunderstanding. My comment about the henna tiger stripes still stands, however.”

  “They’re not henna, they’re tattoos,” I said, and Fremont raised her eyebrows. “And before you ask, I didn’t do them. Tattooing minors is illegal.”

  “Don’t lets the tats fool ya,” Cinnamon said. “She’s more square than you are.”

  “The proper way to say that would be, ‘Do not let her tattoos fool you,’” Fremont corrected, mouth pursed up. “You will need to learn to express yourself properly.”

  “If Clairmont Academy can correct her grammar,” I said, laughing, “that alone will have been worth the price of admission.”

  “We’ll do our very best,” Fremont said with a grin, starting the paperwork. But when done with name-address-and-phone-of-parent, she bit her lip. “And her real name? I do need it for the record.” Cinnamon lowered her head and mumbled something, and Fremont canted her head, making her glasses into reflective half-moons. “What was that, dear?”

  “Stray,” Cinnamon said, quiet as a mouse. “Stray Foundling.”

  Fremont’s head stayed frozen. “Is that another joke?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said, squeezing Cinnamon’s hand again. “Her former guardians aren’t bad folk, but they basically warehoused her. The only reason she has a name on record at all was a trip to the hospital when she was six. We’re petitioning to get it changed—”

  Fremont kept staring at us, eyes hidden behind those half-moons, then she shook her head and began typing. “Is Cinnamon spelled like the spice?”

  “Yes,” Cinnamon said eagerly.

  “I hope you get it changed soon,” she said, smiling. “People really called you Stray?”

  “Until DaKOta,” Cinnamon replied, with a big toothy grin at me.

  “Good for you,” Fremont said. But she didn’t look happy as she took the rest of the information we could give her. Finally she muttered, “no transcript … no transcript.”

  “Is that really going to be a problem?” I asked. “Because I haven’t found one in my back pocket while you’ve been typing. I hope we haven’t all been wasting our time.”

  “No, it’s just … this is a middle school. There are certain skills she’ll need coming in,” Fremont said, focusing on Cinnamon. “What books have you read recently, dear?”

  “I hates reading,” Cinnamon shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “I likes audiobooks.”

  “You read audiobooks?” Fremont raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

  “I dunno,” Cinnamon said sullenly. “Fuck, I didn’t knows it would be a test—”

  “Cinnamon!” I said.

  “We do not tolerate such language at the Clairmont Academy,” Fremont said. “And we have standards here, which you will have to meet to become a student.”

  “What’s ‘standards’ means?” Cinnamon said, sharp and suddenly scared. “You don’t means cuss words. What’s ‘standards’ means?”

  “Since you have no academic record, you will have to take an entrance exam.”

  Entrance Exam

  “But … but the letters, they swims!” Cinnamon said, eyes going wide. “How can you ask me to take a test before you teaches me to keep them still?”

  Fremont’s brow furrowed when Cinnamon said the letters swam. “Can you read?”

  “Would you ask that if I was blind?” Cinnamon said. “That’s why there’s audiobooks.”

  “You’re quite right, Cinnamon,” Fremont said, glancing at me. “So consider this the start of an aural test. What have you been reading?”

  “I-I—dunno,” Cinnamon said nervously.

  “You don’t know because you don’t remember, or because you don’t read?”

  “I do too reads,” Cinnamon said. She slipped out her iPod and began thumbing the wheel. “Magical Thinkin’,” she said. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Kafka’s Seashore—”

  “You … have all those on there?” Fremont asked Cinnamon—but her eyes flicked to me, sharply. “You have all your books on there?”

  “Not everything,” Cinnamon said. “Just recent stuff. It only holds thirty gigs.”

  “May I see?” Fremont asked. Reluctantly, Cinnamon handed her the iPod; equally reluctantly, Fremont took it from Cinnamon’s long, clawed fingers. Once she had it, however, she clickwheeled like a natural. “The Year of Magical Thinking? Kafka on the Shore? Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said. Nervously, she grabbed an odd, numbered Rubik’s cube off the desk and began twiddling it with her bony claws. “I ran out of Mom’s books, but we knows this blind witch, and she gave me lots of books off her laptop. She says it was the ‘audible list’?”

  “Witch isn’t a nice thing to call someone,” Fremont said.

  “Unless it is accurate,” I replied. “Jinx—our friend—is a graphomancer.”

  “Ah,” Fremont said. “How did you like Jinx’s suggestions, Cinnamon?”

  “Magical was sad, but I liked Kafka OK,” she said, scowling at the cube. “At first I was pissed ’cuz I thought it was a bio of the guy who wrote the bug book, but it reads OK.”

  “Do not say ‘pissed’, say ‘upset,’” Fremont corrected. “What bug book?”

  “Meta-more-foe-sizz,” Cinnamon pronounced uncertainly, avoiding Fremont’s eyes, twisting the cube in her hands. “The guy becomes this bug and everyone freaks.”

  “Mm-hm,” Fremont said, clicking through the iPod. “Who is Stephen Dedalus?”

  “That writer dude?” Cinnamon said sullenly.

  “That could be a lot of people,” she said. “Do you remember which book he was in?”

  “Two,” Cinnamon said. “The portrait one, and the useless one.”

  Fremont leaned forward, intent, scowling. “Who is Leopold Bloom?”

  Cinnamon brightened. “The guy that likes the kidneys,” she said, half-glaring, half-smiling at me. “Sounded yummy, but the big square won’t get me none though.”

  “I didn’t say never,” I said, surprised. “I just didn’t want, uh, kidney that night.”

  “Good Lord,” Fremont said, staring at her. After a moment she seemed to notice the iPod in her hand and gave it back to Cinnamon. She seemed like she was weighing something. “Thank you, dear. Reading will clearly not be a problem. I’d still like to assess other areas, though—”

  And then the glass door slid open.

  “Doctor Yonas Vladimir,” a man said, smiling warmly as he limped inside. “So, you must be Cinnamon. The girl without a past.”

  I smiled. I bet everyone tended to overlook the rumpled, chalkstained pants and the oversized Mr. Rogers sweater. I bet everyone ignored his bald dome and the clownish spray of brown curls beneath it. You just saw those eyes, sparkling behind his round glasses, and that smile, peering out from his trim goatee, and knew: this man was intelligent, and alive.

  “I gots a past,” Cinnamon said, still fidgeting with the Rubik’s Cube, but smiling now. His grin was infectious—you couldn’t help it. “I just don’t gots an education.”

  “Yonas,” Fremont said, half standing. “I’m so glad you could make it. Dakota Frost, Doctor Vladimir is head of the mathematics department.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Frost,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Please call me Dakota,” I said, standing. He was my height, or a shade less—not as big as he looked, or perhaps that was the stoop. But what a smile he had.

  “Of course,” he said. “Dakota … that’s
quite an unusual first name.”

  “Funny,” I said. “I was just thinking Vladimir’s an unusual last name.”

  “I’m guessing my grandfather ran into a little confusion at Ellis Island,” Vladimir said, the warm smile sparkling into a deprecating grin. “It hasn’t been a common Russian surname for a thousand years. So, Katie, what did you need me for?”

  Fremont smiled. “I hoped you could proctor young Miss Frost’s exam while I gave her mother a tour of the school. She’s got a reading disability, so it may need to be oral—”

  That was great news, but Cinnamon wasn’t listening. It looked like she was stifling a sneeze—or a curse. Then her eyes seemed to widen, and she stood. Decisively.

  “This is stupid,” she said. “A waste of time. Fuck! I can’t read for shit—”

  “Cinnamon!” I said, as Fremont flinched and Vladimir just … chuckled?

  “What? You cusses, in front of God, the police, everybody,” Cinnamon said.

  “Cinnamon—” I warned.

  “I can’t read enough to take a test,” she said, tossing the Rubik’s Cube, tail flailing about as she stalked back and forth in the room like a caged animal. “She just wants to get rid of me. You wants to get rid of me. You all wants to get rid of me. We should go. We gots to go—”

  “Cinnamon Frost,” I said quietly, folding my arms. “Sit. Down.”

  Cinnamon sat in the chair abruptly, eyes wide. It surprised Fremont, even Vladimir—but not me. She just sat there, hands clenched on her skirt, watching me out of the corner of her eye, frozen—except for her rapidly switching tail.

  “What was our agreement when we started school shopping?” I said.

  “If I wants to go to school,” she said, stretching her neck, “I gots to behave myself.”

  “The other part.”

  “That if I don’t behaves myself,” she began—and then the words began tumbling out like a running stream. “I’m sorry, Mom, I really am, please don’t takes my iPod away, but you don’t understands, we gots to go.”