richellemead-vampireacademy01-vampireacademy-110824015328-phpapp02

"You don't think it does? Do you know anyone else who can do that? Or can use compulsion on
dhampirs and Moroi?”
"She never used compulsion like that," she argued.
"She did. She tried to use it on me the night she left. It started to work, but then they took her
away before she finished." Or had they? After all, it was only a month later that Lissa and I had
run away from the Academy. I'd always thought that was my own idea, but maybe Ms. Karp's
suggestion had been the true force behind it.
Lissa crossed her arms. Her face looked defiant, but her emotions felt uneasy. "Fine. So what?
So she's a freak like me. That doesn't mean anything. She went crazy because…well, that was
just the way she was. That's got nothing to do with anything else.”
"But it's not just her," I said slowly. "There's someone else like you guys, too. Someone I
found." I hesitated. "You know St. Vladimir….”
And that's when I finally let it all out. I told her everything. I told her about how she, Ms. Karp,
and St. Vladimir could all heal and use super-compulsion. Although it made her squirm, I told
her how they too grew easily upset and had tried to hurt themselves.
"He tried to kill himself," I said, not meeting her eyes. "And I used to notice marks on Ms.
Karp's skin—like she'd claw at her own face. She tried to hide it with her hair, but I could see
the old scratches and tell when she made new ones.”
"It doesn't mean anything," insisted Lissa. "It—it's all a coincidence.”
She sounded like she wanted to believe that, and inside, some part of her really did. But there
was another part of her, a desperate part of her that had wanted for so long to know that she
wasn't a freak, that she wasn't alone. Even if the news was bad, at least now she knew there
were others like her.
"Is it a coincidence that neither of them seems to have specialized?”
I recounted my conversation with Ms. Carmack and explained my theory about specializing in
all four elements. I also repeated Ms. Carmack's comment about how that would burn someone
out.